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ALLAN BOVEE - PHOTOGRAPHY ADVENTURES IN NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY WINTER 2008
The microscope had been a doctor's pathological instrument and appeared complicated at first. But with the given manual and much experimentation I soon began to see the microscopically tiny world much brighter and clearer than I ever had before. A slide is placed on the stage and a dual-control moves the stage forward and back or left to right. The complicated part was adjusting the condenser and field diaphragm but I soon learned how to do that. The condenser has a diaphragm as well and can be adjusted to increase depth of field. It can also slide out slightly to angle the light on the subject and produce shadows or modeling. Using static subjects on my slides I began to see the subjects much better than I ever had before. I turned my attention to the wildlife found
in pond water. With our winter arriving early, I just barely got some samples
before the ice came and even had to chop through in some areas to collect the
subjects. Once I placed a drop of pond water under the microscope I became
astonished at the little creatures swimming about and of the quality of my
instrument. I couldn't wait to try some photography.
My formal biology training was only what I had in high school and all life then was either a plant or animal. Yet even then some of the subjects were photosynthetic like plants yet motile and carnivorous like animals. Now, everything has been reclassified and it is a work in progress with new genetics or molecular analysis being done. Formerly called protozoa, or first animals, the small one-celled creatures I was observing are now referred to as protists, they are no longer even close to being animals. They have been biologically isolated from each other by millions of years and are as genetically different as a lion is to an oak tree and yet they are swimming together in my drop of water. Animals have been found to be more closely related to fungi then to these protists. In addition to the one celled protists I also find many species of algae, small animals like crustaceans, rotifers, insect larvae, and worms such as nematodes.
A drop of pond water is placed on a microscope slide and covered with a cover glass. Very thin slides are needed as the microscope's objective lenses will touch the slide on some magnifications. My instrument has 40X, 100X, 200X, 400X, and 1000X magnifications. I start with the 40X to look for moving protists under the given light of the microscope. Once spotted, I switch to 100X to pursue my subject. At 200X, I must move the condenser up and change lighting and field. But here you can resolve the cilia (hair) and organelles in the protists. At 400X the condenser is moved so close under the slide you must be careful not to fry the protist. But brief looks at this magnification is really fascinating. To go to 1000X a different procedure is followed. Immersion oil is placed on the objective and top of the cover slide and even on the condenser. The refractive index of oil is better than air and so this step must be taken. Here it is an incredible magnification to resolve the tiniest detail. At this power you can see a bacteria smile (just kidding). I float cover glasses in the culture medias and bacteria grow which then attracts protists and rotifers and others. At 1000X you can see the individual bacteria that have cultured there and even see the ones swimming about with flagella (whip-like appendages). When I am photographing, the stage is
controlled with my left hand to move back and forth and left and right with a two
knobbed control. The right hand focused on the subject which is always going in
and out of focus and may even dive deeper into the drop of pond water and disappear if you are
not keeping up with it. When it is in the camera viewfinder, I fire the camera
with my elbow using an infra-red release. What fun this is! It is just as
complicated and difficult as being outside photographing the fast moving birds I
have chased for years.
The first photograph above shows my current set up with the microscope. I pull out the illumination unit and put my large strobe in its place at the back of the instrument. Then I focus with the flood lamp and fire the camera. The second photograph is of an amoeba. These creatures move by sticking out a leg (psuedopod) and letting the cell contents flow that way. The cell contents look almost like a fine gravel and its movement reminds me of a gravel landslide on a hill. My new biology book was published in 2004 and they still don't have a classification scheme for the amoeba (but they are working on it!)
My fifth photo is of a vorticella. This is a
protist that extends a long line to a solid surface (like the microscope slide)
and extends its body way out looking for food. It then sets its facial cilia in
motion creating a vacuum and sucking into its clear body bacteria and other
edible nutrients which you can then watch it digest. The swirl about its head
from its vacuum can be seen in the photo. If there is any disturbance (like me bumping the
microscope) it quickly retracts faster than you can follow and slowly extends
again after danger has passed The last photograph is a heliozoan or sun animal. These protists are related to the amoebas and have many pseudopods extending out that have a sticky substance on them which traps prey. These victims are then drawn into its body for digestion. I don't find a lot of heliozoans but when I do find one it is very easy to photograph as it floats nearly motionless. But if it is disturbed it disappears in an instant and it takes me a long time to find it again. It must move all the rays at once and transport itself to another area of the drop of water but is too quick for me to see. My cultures are rapidly decaying and soon I will be out of subjects. Several protists I had found and identified earlier are no longer around. But I plan on stocking up when I go to Florida to do shows this winter, and these jars should have some great marine creatures. And when Spring comes back to Michigan I will be out gathering some more material then.
Return to PHOTOGRAPHY JOURNAL main page. Date this page was edited: December 12, 2008. |
About ten years ago I purchased a
microscope. I have always wanted a good unit to use in my nature study and adapt
it for photography and when a nice used one with all the features I was looking
for became available, I bought it. But at the time I was very involved in
photographing birds and scenics and just getting into art shows, so I didn't
have any time to use the microscope. It wasn't until now, when my Biology study
took me to the protists and algae that I decided to bring it out. I didn't have
a clue on how to work it as my experience with microscopes has been limited to
the toy or student types but I did get a lot of use out of them in studying pond
life and other biological subjects. 
The microscope has binocular eyepieces which
allows you to see in stereo and gives you a good idea of the three dimensional
shape of the protists under observation. Coming up out of the tri-ocular head is
a photo tube to mount a camera. After some adaptations, I soon had my Nikon
mounted to the Olympus microscope. The subjects were moving about and I
found I was only getting blurred photographs. So I devised a system to hook up
one of my electronic flashes to replace the illumination system in the
microscope. The fast strobe would stop the motion. But now I couldn't see the subject so I brought in a flood lamp to
view from the side. After a lot of experimentation, I was soon getting decent
photos. I then experimented with different filters in the field diaphragm to
produce different colored backgrounds. The unfiltered photos are clear and it is
difficult to see the protists which are also clear.
The third photo is a paramecium. These
protists are constantly moving about by their cilia all over their bodies which act as
tiny oars and propel them about. They move forward until running into an object
or into the end of the microscope slide and then they back up and go forward again. I found that
if I put them in immersion oil, they would slow down quite a bit and I could
photograph them. The fourth photo here is of a group of euglena. These protists are
green like plants because they photosynthesize but are also known to eat other
protists. They reproduce rapidly (by splitting in two) and will turn a whole
pond green with their numbers. My jar of them is still green and so they must be doing
fine. 
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