THE FIRST rule of this Fight Club is — use insects.
That’s the fighting talk from Polish photographer Igor Siwanowicz, who has spent hours capturing head-to-head stag beetle battles.
His shots of battling insects, which are all male, also include nymphs and caterpillars all showing their true colours in a variety of interactions.
Although the beetles are between four and seven centimetres long, and the mantids less than six centimetres, Igor uses macro photography to capture them in all their creepy-crawly glory.
“The mantids are suspicious of each other and display their wings to appear much larger, but the stag beetles really go at each other,” said Igor.
“They never fight to the death, but in the wild, the loser is tossed down from the tree trunk where the fight has taken place and the victor gets to mate with the female.”
Igor, 35, a research specialist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, US, took many of the shots in his former home studio in Munich, Germany.
He said: “I do keep some of my ’models’ as pets.
“Back in Munich, at the peak of my interest in keeping exotic animals, I owned three chameleons, two tree frogs, and 20-some species of praying mantids.”
Igor insists that all the insects are alive during the shooting.
“I’m often asked if the animals are dead, or if I freeze or stun them in any way. That is never the case." He adds: “The work requires a lot of patience.
“The animals cannot be trained into displaying more complex behaviour, but you may learn how to trigger a certain response, such as a threatening display.”
Even though he deals with some poisonous creatures, Igor claims he has never been bitten.
“I’ve never felt threatened when taking photos, even when dealing with an angry hornet or a short-tempered tarantula.
“The most discomfort I’ve ever experienced as a result of photo session came from a New World Tarantula.
“Its venom has no medical significance, but it kicks off the hairs on its abdomen when it gets annoyed and they spread around like a cloud of itching powder — not a nice sensation.”
Igor bought his first camera nine years ago, but he has always had a fascination with bugs.
“My parents are biologists and I grew up surrounded by biology textbooks,” he said.
“I enjoyed browsing through the illustrations and photographs before I learned how to read.”
He hopes to change misconceptions that insects should be feared.
He said: “I often hear that my photos make animals that people would normally step on or run away from look strangely adorable.
“The highest prize a macro photographer can hope for is positive feedback from someone with a phobic fear of creepy crawlies.
“Some people have even turned my photography into art. I’ve seen it transformed into an oil painting, water colours, and there are six people I know of walking around with my photos tattooed on to their skin. How weird is that?”
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