The only way is up
N-Photo: the Nikon magazine|November 2022
University of Cambridge tutor John Brackenbury tells how he developed specialist photography equipment and techniques for incredible images of insects in flight
John Brackenbury
The only way is up

Up, Up & Away is a book about a photographic project to depict butterflies and other insects in flight, in a way that locates the viewer alongside the insect. In it, I share the three-decade-long development of the ideas and hardware needed to bring the vision to life.

I had always been fascinated by the subject, ever since I wrote Insects in Flight 30 years ago, which was nominated for the 1992 RhÔne-Poulenc Prize for Science Books. At that time I was shooting on film using my manual Nikon FM2 cameras and the 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor. I began to rebel against the conventional way of depicting macro subjects as things seen isolated at the end of a lens. I wanted to locate the subject in a landscape. But this is difficult enough with a still subject, and far more challenging when it is in flight.

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