The last couple of weeks, I’ve been documenting the growth and development of the Garden tiger moth. Because I want to include the entire caterpillar stage and it’s impossible to accurately predict how long this will take, I have to take into account multiple scenarios. In this case, I planned a photo session every other day, just to be sure I had the photos I needed. If the caterpillar stage lasts for 6 weeks, as was the case with this species, I have a lot of photos and I only need 8 of them for the final series. I thought it was a shame not to use so many other ones, so I decided to turn them into an animation. Read more

The last day of 2020 is a good moment to look back at the last year and all the species I could add to my project. Because of the situation with the Corona virus, it has been a very difficult year for photographers and this was also the case for me. But fortunately this also had a positive effect; especially during the first lock-down in the spring, I didn’t have to reserve time for commercial work, because there wasn’t any , so I could work full-time on my project. This led to the most series I’ve ever done in one year, 23 different species or breeds. Read more

 

For the Development project I document the growth and development of different animal species. But does that mean that all animals of a certain species grow the same way? There is only one clear answer to that question; ‘no’. I’m documenting the development of a certain individual of an animal species under a specific set of circumstances, because just as us humans, animals don’t all grow at the same pace. Read more

This week I faced a new challenge; photographing a newborn calf. Earlier, I’ve written a blog about shooting really small animals and how I do this, but what happens if an animal is already quite large at birth? So far, the largest animal was the Dutch pied goat and she just barely fitted on my standard table top set-up. That obviously wasn’t the case with the calf, so I had to come up with a new plan. Read more

One of the species I would really like to add to the Development project for a while now, is a lady bug. A few years ago, I attempted to follow their growth and development, but I ran into all kinds of problems; a lens that couldn’t magnify enough and escaping aphids. Later, I encountered the same problems with other series and have found suitable solutions, so this year I wanted to give it another try. It turned out that caring for lady bug larvae isn’t as easy as it seems. Read more