Dearie me, it seems as if we’ve got some truly pacifist photographers in our midst: My recent post on making a killing jar to easier be able to take macro photos of insects attracted 27 comments, largely along the lines of ‘sure, you can kill them, but where’s the challenge in that?’ – with variations, of course.

David Harper felt particularly strongly about the topic, and went to the point of sending me a series of photos taken with a Canon SD-100, and argues that if he can take photographs like this with simple equipment without killing anything, then why should you have to? The man’s got a point…

A bit of further research shows that the vast majority of photographers shun the idea of killing insects to get photos of them – in our poll, a full 51% said that snuffing the little beasties was ‘absolutely not’ okay – and another 22% argue that, well, you can kill them if you absolutely have to. The point is, however, that it turns out that you don’t actually have to kill anything in order to photograph it.

Searching through pages and pages of amazing macro photos on Flickr is a truly humbling experience for a budding macro photographer – there are literally thousands of downright amazing photographs.

Interestingly, none of them feature insects that have been killed. And of course, if you feel like you can’t get the photos you need, there are many ways you can simply stun insects for a limited time – Check out the many insightful comments in this thread to learn more, and perhaps to get some inspiration, too!

Photos used in this post are all under creative commons licence, and found on Flickr. Big thanks to *micky*, Paco Espinoza and Tanakawho.

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