All of the images on this website were generated by students in the Entomology course (Biology 547L) at Duke University. The objective of the project is to document and photograph the great diversity of insects found on Duke’s campus.
For macrophotography we use a variety of hand-held digital cameras, primarily Nikon Coolpix models. For extreme close-up photography we use two microscope setups: a ProgRes C3 (Jenoptik) digital camera mounted on a Wild M5A stereo-microscope, and an Olympus DP71 digital camera mounted on an Olympus sZX16 stereo-microscope.
For focus enhancement we use Zerene Stacker, a program that combines the in-focus portions of a z-series of photographs, which allows one to achieve a greater depth-of-field than can be obtained with a single picture.
Most pictures were processed with Adobe Photoshop to improve brightness, contrast and color saturation, and to remove some blemishes.
Scanning electron micrographs were taken with a FEI XL30 ESEM at Duke’s Shared Material & Instrumentation Facility (SMIF) using collected specimens sputter-coated with gold-palladium.
