November 2016 Meeting: Wildflowers and the Insects That Visit Them - a video presentation by Richard Pearce

At the Uplands Garden Club November meeting Richard Pearce amazed us with his close-up videos of Wildflowers and The Insects That Visit Them.

For the past 15 years Richard Pearce, a retired medical researcher, has spent much of his spare time trekking through woods, prairies, and along waterways throughout Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin obtaining high resolution images of plants for his Flora of the Driftless Region website (posted at arrasimages.com) and, more recently, getting close up, slo-motion video of the insects that visit them.

Uniquely, for the stills, Pearce uses an office scanner instead of a camera. For rare or listed species he takes the scanner into the field along with a power pack, computer, and extra lights to get extremely high resolution still images. If the flower is common or in fact a weed he can collect its flower and some leaves and scan them back in the studio under more controlled conditions. The method provides optimal detail with an extremely wide field of view, and it reproduces color—especially blues and purples—more faithfully than does a camera. It’s perfect for documenting the minute floral and leaf structures that distinguish one species from another.

For the video, Pearce turns to a smart phone. When fitted with a macro lens and set to capture 240 frames a second, the handheld phone is perfect for capturing spur-of-the-moment events like a bee fly pitching her eggs into a miner bee’s nest, or a leaf cutter snipping out a bit of rose petal, tucking it under her legs and flying it home.

“The slo-motion video allows the viewer enter the world of the insect,” Pearce notes. “Not needing a heavy tripod, massive lenses, or special lighting frees one to capture insects as they naturally behave.”

Pearce’s photoscans have appeared on the cover of Julien’s Journal several times and the technique has been featured in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald and Big River Magazine. His videos can be seen on his Youtube channel, “Richard Pearce.” Links and other information are available at arrasimages.com. Pearce has a permanent show at the Stonehouse Gallery in Galena and is currently featured at the Longbranch Gallery in Mineral Point.