Mind-boggling macro photography

I've just come across an article in the Daily Mail about a photographer who rises to new heights in the field of macro photography.

If you are scared of creepy crawlies you might want to look away now.

These are the remarkable close-up photographs of flies composed by stitching together up to 687 separate images taken through a microscope.

Tomas Rak photographs a tiny area of the fly under a microscope before moving it a mere five hundredth of a millimetre and taking another snap.

It can take a staggering 687 movements and 'micro-photographs' to capture every part of the fly in such stunning detail.

He then uploads the images to a computer and 'stitches' them together to create a larger whole.

They show the furry insects' bizarre facial expressions, bright colours and bulging eyes in an extraordinary new way.

Face of a wasp, measuring just 2mm. (less than eight hundredths of an inch) across

Mr Rak, from Wandsworth, south-west London, said: 'I put the flies on a special microslider which can be moved as little as one five hundredth of a millimetre.

'I then place this under a camera and microscope and take a photo.

'I get a really sharp picture but over a small area so I move the microslider across a tiny bit and take another shot.

'This has to be repeated many times before I have photographed the whole fly. My record is 687 shots to make up a single insect.'

There's more at the link, including many more (and much larger) photographs. Spell-binding viewing for those interested in this field, and highly recommended.

Peter