macro photography discovers detailed patterns of butterfly wings shot by chris perani

chris perani shoots butterfly wings using macro photography to achieve an incredibly high quality of the colorful images. the artist captures the insects with a 10x microscope attached to a 200 mm lens and makes hundreds of exposures which he then glues into one perfect photo.

‘my camera is attached to a stack shot rail which moves it no more than 3 microns per photo to achieve focus across the thickness of the subject, which can be up to 8 millimeters,’ explains perani. ‘this yields about 350 separate exposures, each with a different sliver in focus, that must be composited and stacked together to create one single photo.’

the photographer repeats the whole process about 6 times for each section of the wing. once all the pieces have been shot, he builds the final image much like a puzzle.

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: maria erman | designboom