The only way is up

University of Cambridge tutor John Brackenbury tells how he developed specialist photography equipment and techniques for incredible images of insects in flight

- John Brackenbury

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.