7 Go on a backyard safari

How to become a god of small things

Who says you need an expensive overseas trip to get great wildlife shots? Often you don’t need to go any further than your back garden, as Brian Valentine proves with this image. “This is a small weevil, about 2.8mm long, and I took it at 5:1 magnification using a Canon MPE-65 lens,” Brian explains. “Because of the lack of light at high magnification, I used flash. I shot in Manual and the flashgun was set to ETTL. This helps stop any movement blur, because the flash duration becomes the effective shutter speed.”

The lesson of this shot is to develop an eye for small things, and there should be plenty of different bugs and insects around in the garden at this time of year. Why not head out to your garden and see what you can capture?

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* “Know your subject and how they behave,” Brian explains. “You need to watch them for a while. This weevil was moving extremely slowly, trying to negotiate the leaf spines.” * Cheat if necessary. It’s fairly hard to shoot handheld at such high magnification, so Brian cut the leaf the bug was on and placed it on the roof of his car. “This allowed me to rest the camera lens on my hand which was resting on the car, giving a stable base.” * To overcome the narrow depth of field you get at high magnification, maximise the amount in focus by changing the plane of focus of the camera. You can also shoot at narrow apertures or use focus-stacking to increase the depth of field “This is three shots taken at different focus depths put together using Zerene Stacker.”