Insects

I wanted to do a shoot using an insect because I had found a dead butterfly in the attic on an old china dolls hand which was really strange. When the Nature Morte project come about, I started seeing insects and bugs being used in the artwork I wanted to give it a go. 

I took the butterfly into the studio and I remembered seeing in a book a picture of a butterfly casting a long shadow in the evening light, the semeiotics of the long shadow was that the butterfly had come to the end of it's life. I wanted to have a go at my own interpretation of the image and this is what I came up with.

I got into a bit of a habit after the first butterfly and started to collect any insects that had died around the house. Even when I would go out with friends I would be looking in the windowsills of the pub just to see if I could add anything to my creepy collection. I was doing this because I had a clear vision in mind of the photo that I wanted to create an for this I needed to have a bit of an assortment.

Testing the lights 

Once the light where okay I had Managed to focus the camera on the mucky glass rather than on the incests and I thought with all the marks showing it look alright.

Once I had got everything in focus I was really impressed with the detail that was coming through on the insects such as the delicate wings and little hairs. 

I thought I would arrange them like they were on one of them old pin frames where they would gather rare species and pin them in a frame and show them off around the house. apart these are household bugs rather than rare species. Does this make them any less special to look at? 

Final Photo 

I couldn't decide out of the two so I decided they worked well together and am happy with them both on the same print.