Book of monsters : $b Portraits and biographies of a few of the inhabitants of woodland and meadow — John Shaqi
Book of monsters : $b Portraits and biographies of a few of the inhabitants of woodland and meadowFairchild, David
Science
Book of monsters : $b Portraits and biographies of a few of the inhabitants of woodland and meadow
Fairchild, David
Insects; Myriapoda; Spiders
If you compare these photographs with those to be found in most books on
insects, you will find that they differ in several particulars. They are
all either front views or side views of the creatures, whereas those in
books on entomology are generally views from above. Imagine a book on the
horse in which only top views were shown, or a guide to a zoölogical
garden illustrated with the various wild beasts photographed from above.
It is true that, being an much larger, we generally look down at these
monsters, but a mouse also generally runs along the floor or under our
feet and yet a zoölogist pictures it from the same point of view that he
does an elephant. Crows look down upon us, yet I imagine that no one will
admit that the crow's impression of human beings is as correct or as
interesting as that which we have of ourselves. Every creature has a right
to be portrayed from its own level, and the reason these photographs are
unusual is because they carry out this principle and do each creature
justice.
Another particular in which these pictures are new is that, although they
represent magnifications of from five to twenty diameters, they are not
enlargements from small photographs, but views taken directly from 5 × 7
photographic negatives.
Then too, these creatures have been posed with considerable care in order
to give them a lifelike appearance, and this work was done immediately
after they had been anesthetized, and in some cases while they were still
alive.
The whole art of taking these large photographs of insects is so simple
that thousands of amateurs ought to be able to take them.
The outfit consists of the camera, which is just a long box, a long-focus
lens, a piece of ground glass and a focusing glass, a flash light, a pair
of pincers, some needles mounted in handles or else some small dental
tools, a few little blocks of wood, a candle, a piece of glass covered
with tissue paper, and a long hollow cylinder made of stiff black paper or
cardboard. Add to these a great deal of patience and you have all that is
needed.
I made my camera box out of thin quarter-inch whitewood boards and pasted
black paper over the joints to keep out the light. Into one end of this
box I set the front board with the objective screwed into it. Squaring off
the other end of the box, I carefully fitted to it a 5 × 7-inch ground
glass holder, exactly the size of an ordinary 5 × 7 plate holder. I framed
this in with pieces of wood so that I could slip out the ground glass
holder and put a plate holder in its place. For purposes which will be
explained later, the ground glass was not fastened into its holder, but a
narrow slit through one end of the frame was made just large enough so
that it could be slid in or out without taking out the frame itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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