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Week 8 [04.12 - 10.12.2017] The world through the eyes of a child.

With time, we forget how beautiful the world is. This beauty surrounds us all the time.  With our eyes, everything is fine, but we are blind. We don't see the colors, details, and harmony between them.

Photographers and artists try to help us see again what we have forgotten. This problem is trying to solve the photographer Levon Biss. He, like all of us, misses his childhood. About that feeling of delight that we felt looking around. Levon has looked for a new, extraordinary subject when one afternoon he and his young son popped a ground beetle under a microscope and discovered the wondrous world of insects.




Questions:
     How do you feel about insects?  What was your overall level of emotion while watching the video?
2 Have you ever noticed how beautiful insects are? If so, under what circumstances?
     Have you noticed that you forget about the beauty of the surrounding world? How do you solve this problem?


Comments

Uh, no, regardless how much I try I just don't like insects and I find nothing really nice in them. Sure, as a creatures in terms of biology I can totally agree that they can be interesting, as well as their species, natural behaviour and so on, but I just don't find anything appealing in them, there are hundreds of more interesting things in the world, I'll keep insects for somebody else :).
Anonymous said…
Actually I hate insects and I'm kind of afraid of them. I know they are so tiny and can't hurt me but they're just disgusting for me.
On the other hand I found those pictures really interesting and beautiful. Photos are really amazing.
I think people very often forget how beautiful our word is. I'm not this kind of person, I like to observe and notice nice things in my surrounding.
Unknown said…
I hate insects and especially mosquitos. Why do they exist?. I know that other animals eat them but I would get rid of them. I wouldn't cry if they disappeared. It's good that mosquito doesn't react as quick as a fly. After watching videos I'm sure that insects are beautiful but i don't have a microscope in my eyes so I don't see it and still I don't like insects. I prefer beauty of bigger animals and nature around us.
Alicja said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alicja said…
Levon Biss did a wonderful job of bringing back our childhood curiosity and the feeling of excitement when exploring the world around us. His photography is very impressive. The insects look both beautiful and unreal - like alien creatures.

I loved to observe insects when I went for summer forest camping trips when I was a kid. My grandfather was an interested in entomology and used to collect insects. However, I find both insects collecting and taxidermy depressing, I much rather admire animals when they are alive.

Sadly, today's world is not made to pause and admire the beauty and oddity around us. How to change it? Maybe move the focus from ourselves to the outside world. Less smartphones, more trips to the wilderness? :)
Unknown said…
I am not fully agree about statement that our curiosity becomes dulled by familiarity as we get older. Most of the people, after graduation from college or even from high school, enter the life in "work-home" mode. Slight amount of them finds the way to to abstract from it. That is, in my opinion, the main reason, why people decide to put the familiar things before something curious.

I've heard about microphotographing befroe, and for me it is beautiful only from scientific point of view. I mean, it is cool that Levon do what he like and do it really good, but I don't think that the beauty of world starts fade for us as we grow. There is nothing bad in becoming more rational, and it also has it's beaty. And, by the way, sometimes, such searchies of worlds beaty look like simple escapism from problems of reality. Okay, our world is beautiful, in huge things and in small things, but what about ugly things? Are they sholud be avoided?

I don't know why, but that was thoughts that I've had while watching this video. I mean, Levon Biss' work is good, it is pretty, it has some meaning behind it, i'm okay with it. But in general, I think that we shouldn't concentrate so much on things that we consider beautiful, but instead we should concentrate on doing something that are bad and ugly.
Vladlen Kyselov said…
Insects are the creatures that makes me feel uncomfortable, so I guess no matter what I will certainly avoid or kill them. I understand that they are important part of our ecosystem but still I can`t handle them. Also I hate them because there are lots of them and they are so small and disgusting some of them are even dangerous to our life.
Unknown said…
I do not like any kind of insects. Maggots and stuff... bleh. The only one looking nice is butterfly. Why? Because of colors and fur-like coating. Nature IS beautifull buy nowadays we focus on our daily actions or our addictions. I can see this problem when going to holidays to places where nature is part of human life.
Unknown said…
I hate insects. They bite and scare me. And they have ugly look. Sometimes I get a closer look at he insect, but only to look what certein insect it is. I noticed that I forget about beauty of this world. I don't solve this problem. It is not a problem for me at all.
Marcin Górski said…
I don't like any kind of insects, I wrote about it last weekend. Insects life can be a kind of hobby... but not for me! The worst representative? Mosquitoes! Why do they exist?!
My relationship with insects is simple - as long as i see them constantly(if they invade my personal space, room whatever) im fine with them. If i loose track of one i will go great lengths to find it and kill it (room case), except mosquitoes bur them all.

As of video, amazing photography technique and attention to detail :P I find it interesting how children react to what could be their worst fears, horrors in real life (3 meters high insect pictures).
Unknown said…
No way. I hate insects, because I tend to suffer due to insect stings, that's why I try to care about myself having rest in a forest, for example. I don't have special feelings about this video, the insects look rather awful.
The only one insect,which doesn't make me irritated is ladybird. I haven't noticed yet how insects are beaufitul,unfortunately.
The only one thing,which may help us is returning to nature. Let's throw all smartphones out and only then we could notice the surrounding things and people
I am neutral to insects. I only hate ticks, mosquitos and wasps. I did not have no special feelings watching the video. I enjoy watching grasshoppers and butterflyes, they are the most beautiful insects for me. As a kid I liked to observe them while playing outside. I do not forget about beauty of our world, I love winter when it snows and the temperature is below 0 degrees. I love summer, and watching the clouds in the sky, i love to stare at the stars at night, when I am outside the city, and there are no clouds. I am also a big fan of hiking. So I do not have this problem.
People have been doing extreme macro like this for ages now and there are forums (like photomacrography.net) with many people posting photos like this using rigs just as elaborate. Even on Flickr, you can see lots of it. There is no way people at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History have not seen "anything quite like it before" like he says.
Unknown said…
Well, while this video might be nice and interesing, as almost EVERYTHING looks nice under the microscope (and with electron one, even simple objects look like masterpieces), but insects in common are generally the things I "kill with fire", of course not all of them (like, you know, bees, butterflies, some nice, colorful moths and perhaps lacewings - they kill mites and other pests, are generally docile and do not interfere with humans), but my kill-to-spare ratio is usually above 1.00.
I saw some nice-looking insects, those were mostly random encounters, where per one nice, there were hundreds of annoying ones.
I don't have time for admiring the beautiful world with such accuracy, maybe later, but not right now.
Sorry I cannot find the way to think an insect is a beautiful creature. I hate them - I have mosquito net in all windows in the house just to get rid of them for sure.
Unknown said…
I don't like insects at all and it disgust me a bit. As you probably see I am not fun of insects and I didn't discover they 'beauty'. You are right that we often forget about beauty of the surrounding world and I think that the best option to remind it is a afoot trip to the mountains for few days.
Unknown said…
Generally when someone talks about insects, I feel absolutely nothing. Neither rejection nor fascination. I don't notice any insects except mosquitoes that constantly sting me during the holiday season. Have I ever seen beautiful insects? I saw various beautiful, colorful ones in the zoo or museums, but I can't even remember what kind of insects they were. When I see them, I can say that they are quite interesting, but normally I'm not aware of their existence.
Unknown said…
Oh, that was beautiful.. Thanks for your awesome video. I am so into macro photography and that guy did an awesome job, it is so inspiring.. I don't like insects, but it is only because we live in such different worlds. If some big animal could harm us - we are just afraid of it and avoid it. But we can't avoid insects, they are too small, they are everywhere, always ready to sting and annoy. But if we look closely.. they are not so bad, just having their own life, where they need to eat and survive too... And the human always thinks that he is the main creature on Earth, that's why we are destroying this beautiful planet... And those small creatures are beautiful in their own way. Thanks for this awesome macros we could be closer to their world. Of course, I won't start loving mosquitos and wasps, but now I can't say that insects are ugly:)
Yevhen Shymko said…
It's interesting to watch such a detailed photos of a surrounding world. Shows you things you you might don't care about but they gives you perspective about your life and wonderful things that are happening around you. For me it wasn't a problem to spot beauty around and I think it because of my kind of childish approach to life.
Unknown said…

I don't have a problem with insects. I don't panic when i see them but i don't feel big interest in them. In this film they look amazing and now i think that i should broaden my knowledge about them. I like nature and i know that it's amazing to stop sometimes and observe it. It help us to relax. For this problem i have only one solution. Stop and stare :D
Thank you for that opinion, Tomasz. Traveling to the mountains is a really nice option see the beauty of nature that surrounds us.
Marcin, thank you for your comment. I also don`t like insects. Mosquitoes carrying out the different infections serve as the most important stabilizer of ecosystems. They regulate the number of animal populations, since predators.
Daniel, thx for you comment and opinion. Children's reactions really cool))
But, anyway, thank you for your opinion, Wiktor.
Alicja, thank you for the wonderful answer. Probably this is one of the few positive reviews on this article. I really do not like insects. They are nasty and always climb through all the cracks. I am very grateful to Levon Biss, who showed us the other side of these creatures. For all my dislike, I can admit that they are beautiful.
Thank you for your opinion. I think different people in our society have to find their own goals and aspirations. And then develop it. Then our whole society will progress in many directions.
Unknown said…
I'm not a fan of insects in general. But those pictures are awesome! As a kid I remember discovering few extraordinary, very colourful beetles, chasing them around, admiring their unique patterns. Sadly most of us forget about the beauty of the surrounding world, we don't have time for it anymore. I do notice it about myself, when I do I try to stop for a moment and just look around as if I see the surroundings for the first time in my life or focus on a most common thing I spot, an apple? Beautiful, delicious, juicy, colourful apple, a leaf, a bird, a stick. Simple as that.

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