Daniel Cooper's Photo Blog: Black garden ant

Welcome to my blog

I am an exclusive photographer with istockphoto and produce a wide variety of images. Recently I have been experimenting with high magnification photography of insects, plants and anything else I find that looks interesting up close.

I am a first year undergraduate studying Biology at the University of Oxford. I have a particular interset in entomology and enjoy exploring the huge diversity of insect species in the UK.

I aim to use this blog to share some of the photos I have been taking which I find particularly interesting, I try to do a little bit of research on the subjects of my photos but am far from an expert. if I have made any big errors or misidentified something, please leave a comment or send me an email to correct me .

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My Getty portfolio

Saturday 27 March 2010

Black garden ant

This is the ant Lasius niger which is very common, it is found all over Europe as well as in Asia. The vicious looking mandibles are used for chomping on small insects and spiders, this species also milks aphids for honeydew as well eating fruit.

The head is about 1mm across and the total length of the ant is 3.5mm.
This image is a stack of 120 photos which were taken with a Nikon M plan 10/0.25 objective on bellows. This is my first attempt at photographing an insect at this magnification and I found minimizing vibrations to be very difficult. I think I am going to try using a more solid base for my next try.