Continuing with botanical studies... The tip of a small weedy maple. (I think its a maple - will know for sure in a month or so when leaves emerge.) 75 photos in 2 stacks.
The empty husk of a milkweed seed pod. Shot in the studio - 50 combined exposures in 2 stacks.
Wood fungi. An unusually long and warm January thaw has many things waking up from their winter dormancy - including this wood fungi.
Twenty five stacked digital images.
Been a few months since I've made a stacked macro shot - so here's a portrait of a leaf footed bug that stumbled across my desk a few weeks ago. I spent far more time cleaning it than I care to admit, but it is still a bit dirty:
Pentax K-3, reverse mounted SMC K 24mm f3.5, approximately 4x lifesized. 59 combined exposures.
It's autumn, and time to lay in firewood for the upcoming winter months. I found this spider in my wood pile as I rotated out the remnants of last year's firewood and began stacking a newly delivered load. My best guess on identification is that this is a ground spider, family Gnaphosidae.
Since it was nestled on a piece of firewood I positioned in on a wood chip to simulate its natural environment. This portrait was made at approximately 3x lifesized and is 135 stacked images (two separate passes on the subject.)
A crested treehopper collected earlier this summer:
This would be in the family Membracidae and likely subfamily Telamona. Magnification just over 2x lifesized, 67 stacked images.
A hover fly, family Syrphidae:
Taken at a modest 3x lifesized, 82 stacked images. Made with a Pentax K-01, DFA 50mm f2.8 reverse mounted on extension.
An up close image of a Japanese Beetle - Popillia japonica:
These iridescent beetles love to much on almost anything that grows in your garden, and with the absence of any natural predators in North America, they are indeed a destructive pest.
This photo is a stack focused composite of 54 exposures taken in a single pass at roughly 5x lifesized magnification.