An unflinching photographic look at insects and the deepening impact of our treatment in their natural habitats.
/art
What remains, when nothing is left to hide.
This photograph confronts the stark line between life and death without hesitation. Capturing a European Hornet in its stillness, I walked the tightrope between precise composition and raw honesty, choosing not to obscure the insect’s lifeless form but to honour it.
The image holds onto decay, fragility, and reality, preserving the truth instead of sanitizing it. As I edited, I recorded my thoughts, documenting the tension between aesthetic control and emotional integrity. I didn’t want a single detail to dominate or disappear. Every choice was deliberate—to bring balance, to hold the viewer’s eye, and to slow time just enough for reflection. There’s a beauty in what remains, even when what remains is haunting.
The data that reveals what it took to hold this moment in place.
Behind the image are numbers, measurements, and markers of time. These details add weight, revealing just how much care and effort shaped what you see.
- 01Editing time00.00.00This is the total duration I spent meticulously editing and refining this specific artwork using Photoshop.
- 02Images taken0The total count of individual photographs originally captured during the photographic session.
- 03Pixel-shift images0For each pixel shift image, the Sony camera captured 16 distinct shots, incrementally moving the sensor by one pixel with each shot. This process combines these captures to produce a significantly larger and more detailed final image.
- 04Specimen size3 CMEuropean Hornets are significantly larger than most wasps and bees. They are about 26-38 mm long, making them twice the size of a typical wasp.
- 05Specimen LocationLuxembourgThe geographical origin or specific site where the specimen was found.
Hundreds of tiny choices, stitched together across scattered hours and late nights, and the mental strain of showing it all.
This video captures me narrating the entire creative process, why I took on this project, the mental hurdles of exposing my workflow, and the emotional strain of documenting every step instead of simply presenting the polished result. It’s an honest look at the tension between transparency and perfectionism, and what it took to not only create but also to record it all as it happened.
Then comes the fast-forwarded version: 72 hours, 6 minutes, and 32 seconds of footage distilled into 14 minutes and 25 seconds. That’s 300 times faster than real-time, a high-speed glimpse into a multi-day marathon of focus and creation.