After dabbling with macro photography for some time, Levon Biss took his camera lens to a world-class collection of insects, showing his subjects in a totally new light.

Sometimes inspiration comes from the unlikeliest of places, but no gardener would be surprised to hear that a portrait photographer changed his entire mode of work, through a simple discovery in his garden.

Levon Biss explains, “When my son brought in a ground beetle from the garden and we started looking at it under his microscope, I was amazed at how beautiful these creatures were at high magnification and I tried to work out how I could photograph them.”

That first discovery led to a three-year project that Levon weaved around his commercial assignments, working closely with Oxford University. Prior to the project, he admits his knowledge of insects was “not very good”. Today, it’s considerably better.

“I’m not an entomologist or biologist. I’ve learned a lot but, at the end of the day, I’m a photographer and I see things visually,” he says. “What brought me to insects was the fact that they’re beautiful creatures when you look at them up close, in high magnification. They are stunning.”

From his garden, Levon’s next step was to approach the Natural History Museum at Oxford, who hold a large insect collection – 25,000 arthropod types and over five million specimens to be precise.

Once they saw what he was doing, they were keen to get in involved, so Levon began to work with head entomologist Dr James Hogan. “I would tell him the kind of thing I wanted to shoot, as simple as a certain vibrancy of colour or textures, and he’d go and find something suitable. Then he’d come up with specimens that had a scientific value and we’d meet somewhere in the middle.”

The results were a literal revelation for Dr Hogan, explains Levon. “They hadn’t seen pictures like this before, so every time I showed them a high res – bearing in mind some of them were creeping up to 5GB for a single picture – they were able to see a specimen in full focus, without having to use a microscope.” It’s a far more immediate way of looking at images, which enables both newbies and experts to see things that they hadn’t noticed before.

Levon gets emails from professors all over the world thanking him for the images, which he admits is incredibly rewarding. “It is nice. A lot of effort went into creating these pictures so if people can use them and get something out of them, then that’s good.”

It took Levon about a year to develop the technique he uses now, which involves photographing each insect up to 8,000 times up-close and piecing together a composite image. “The fundamental principle is similar for each one, but each insect has certain challenges, due to different textures, opacities and everything like that,” he explains.

“I’m still tweaking my technique as I speak. Today I’m starting a new project on larvae, which are very transparent and also plankton, so the whole approach has to be looked at again to suit that project. Every subject has its own challenges.”

The project has understandably brought a new level of appreciation of insects to Levon. “I think because we can’t see them with our naked eye, we take for granted how complex and clever these creatures are. It’s mind boggling what they can do and how they’ve evolved. Certainly, since I started on the project, I haven’t stepped on an insect. If insects didn’t do the job that they do, if insects weren’t on the planet, then humans wouldn’t be either. It’s as simple as that.”

Having spent a month in the Bolivian rainforest earlier this year, Levon has plenty more macro photography projects coming up, including a bee exhibition. There’s plenty left to shoot. “You’re never gonna run out! I could do this every day for the rest of my life and I wouldn’t even scratch the surface.” microsculpture.net

PHOTOGRAPHY Levon Biss
 PUBLISHED Garden Heaven 2017