One night at the gym, Chip (Charles Hedgcock – click here for more information on this great photographer) mentioned that he was teaching a Macro Photography class.  I was very interested.  The next day I signed up.  The class was at the Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute, out in the desert to the west of Tucson.  Chip lent me the lens I was using, since I did not have a macro lens at that time.

Several of the people brought things to take pictures of and a sheet with a black-light was set up outside.  One thing about this location is that many of the local creatures are not very happy about people.  You had to watch your footing :-)

This walking stick was very patient, it sat, mostly unmoving, for several hours as we took pictures of it.

            I was told by the local bug experts that nothing exciting was on the sheet, but all of these were photogenic.

                      This mother was walking around as the little ones tried not to fall off too often.

                              This very cute Regal Horned Lizard was not very cooperative.  Every so often he had to be moved back into position (note the finger to see how small he is).  Some people were not interested in him since this was a ‘bug class’!

                                        • I got lots of pictures of these guys, but most of them were x-rated. This one just wanted to escape.
                                        • She was the biggest of our ‘subjects’, but I could not get her to stand up and pose. Some people just put their hands into the cage to ‘prod’ her. I was not willing to do so.

                                        All flash lamps put out lots of UV.  Almost all have UV coating on the lamps.  Chip found one old enough not to have the coating.  He then rewired it for a 'portable' battery pack and put a UV band-pass filter (only passes UV light) over the lamp (note the high-quality rubber-bands holding it together).  It is clumsy, but it works.  The scorpion glowed brightly enough to be seen by our eyes!  The poor thing can see (and did not like) the UV, so we turned the flash down as far as we could and turned up the ISO.  Now, I just need to figure out how to get one for myself.