I can never get enough of photographer Jens Heidler's extreme close-up time-lapse videos, which he posts on his Another Perspective YouTube channel. I recently posted about his "choreographed" video of shitake mushrooms growing from a kit, which is a stunning piece of art. This time it's a more straight-forward but just as beautiful time-lapse of a ladybug's cycle, with a focus on a cluster of hatching eggs.
From PetaPixel:
Heidler experimented with hatching ladybugs and recorded the process alongside other clips of the ladybug lifecycle. He tells PetaPixel that the whole process took him seven days and he used two cameras at an extreme macro distance — the size of one ladybug egg is approximately 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) across. The macro images were taken at f/16 at 3:1 magnification every 10 seconds.
Typically, Heidler looks for egg clusters when he wants to create timelapse or macro photos of the insect world. But, when it comes to ladybug eggs, he had to be on a lookout for areas that had a significant number of aphids, one of the ladybug's favorite prey. Ladybugs tend to gather around them and during springtime and will mate and lay their eggs near them.
Once he found the right location, he looked at the underside of leaves in the area since the chances were high he would find ladybug egg clusters situated there. After finding a cluster, he brought it into his studio for the project.
