This is a blue-green snout weevil from Papua New Guinea. I purchased the dried and packaged insect from a supplier in the U.S., and then I opened the plastic and put the insect in a 'relaxing chamber' -- which is nothing more than a Tupperware container with a damp paper towel at the bottom. With the lid in place, the moisture relaxes the appendages of the insect. This allows me to move the legs and the antennae into natural looking positions. Using ultra-thin insect pins, I was able to keep the moistened appendages in place until the weevil's body dried again. I then removed the pins and placed the subject on a natural looking branch and photographed it with a 50mm macro lens and 3 extension tubes. This made the depth of field quite shallow, even at f/32. So, I chose an f/8 aperture (considered the sharpest aperture on the lens) and used the focus stacking technique to make sure all the details of the insect were tack sharp. I took 22 exposures (focusing manually) down the length of the weevil, from the foreground antennae to the last footl. In Photoshop, I combined all the frames so I had complete focus on the insect. I purposely let the background to go soft.
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