This project began in December of 2017. My partner Carson Gilford and I were inspired by the works of photographer Levon Biss to take on a micophotography project of our own. After alot of research we decided to use Zerene Stacker and Adobe Photoshop. Each time we shot a piece of the bug we added it to the photoshop file, kind of like one big puzzle. The bug itself is approximately 3 cm, making it the largest bug to be photographed at this scale.

The Dancing Wavelengths Eupholus Bennetti

After the top part of the bug was finished, it was awarded an honorable mention from the American Association of Physics Teachers with the following caption:

The eupholus bennetti (blue) derives its color from the very small scales located all over the beetle. To see the many wavelengths created by the scales, the beetle must be photographed through a 10x microscope lens which has a very short depth of field. The small depth of field would cause the top and bottom of the body to not be in focus at the same time in a single photo. A stackshot program was used to stack hundreds of photos of the bug on top of each other. Each photo produced only a very small section of the bug in focus.

Picture Of Setup

After each shot the camera moves one micrometer (1 mμ). Due to the high depth of field of the each shot, about 50 to 400 pictures have to be taken per portion of the bug.

Re-shooting some key components of the bug that may become apparent when the picture is magnified. We plan on printing the bug up to approximately 7 feet tall, where some small errors will be very apparent.

Compiled Bug (Before Color Correction)

now for the fun part... VIRTUAL reality!

My goal for the virtual reality portion of this project was to allow the user to zoom in and out of the bug and examine the immense detail of the photograph in 3D.  
I started by working on some C++ code will be able to help store the immense resolution of the bug while maintaining a reasonable frame-rate. 

The main obstacle I had to going into this project was that the file resolution was so high and I want the virtual reality user to be able to see every little detail of the bug in virtual reality. I wrote (in C++) a script that constantly updates that UE4 material texture. I also worked on some code that allows the user to scale the image up and down using the motion controllers.

After I displayed my work at my school's STEM week fair, I received some great feedback. I then added some 'pickup' code so the user can move the bug in virtual reality as well as zoom in and out. I also added a 'magnification' scale so that the user can see how much from the actual size of the bug they zoomed in by.

Version 2.0.0 Product footage:

Download on Viveport

The Bug's Official Unveiling (3/15/2019)

After publishing on Viveport, we printed the the bug 7' by 4' on Fujiflex mounted on ​aluminium. We are currently talking with the curators of the Museum of Natural history in Los Angeles and New York about displaying or work there.

The Magnified Picture of the Beetle Next To The Actual Beetle

Also received Viewpoint's Photography of the Year and the Departmental Art Award for my work on this project.