One of the most challenging aspects of photographing live insects is something I call the “scurry factor”. The little buggers (nyuck-nyuck-nyuck) just do not like to hold still very long. Of course, this is much worse when dealing with flying insects, but even the non-flying varieties can pose quite a number of problems to overcome.
Click on the photo above if you’d like to see a little bit of information about how the scene was lit.
The above shot is the most clear depiction I have of the rig I used to keep the ants from scurrying away from me.
I bent a couple of paper clips and stretched a piece of clear tape across them – sticky side down. Then I placed the contraption into a shallow white ceramic bowl filled with white vinegar. Ants do not like to swim in vinegar, so even when they’d venture down one of the paperclip legs, they’d climb right back where I wanted them within a few seconds.
I placed a few sugar crystals on the top of the tape to hold their interest in a fixed location for more than a second at a time. This is really vital because shooting live insects that like to scamper about requires you to shoot handheld – I’ve tried it w/ a tripod – even w/ a micro adjusting rail, you just cannot react fast enough to catch the insects in action.
Other techniques that have proven quite successful in the past include smearing a 1-inch swath of Vicks® Vap-O-Rub™ around the sides of a ceramic bowl, then placing the insect in the bottom of the bowl. Many insects will absolutely refuse to walk through that stuff (and who could blame them), while others will just trod right through without giving it a second thought. Ants fall into the latter category – thus the vinegar trick.