Andy Murray and the astonishing world of the mesofauna.
The courtship dance of a male and female Sminthurides malmgreni springtail. Devon, UK.
They are less than one millimetre long and can be found everywhere from the freezing high slopes of Mount Everest to the stifling darkness of a cave nearly two kilometres below the earth’s surface. Their fossilised ancestors have been discovered in 410 million year old rock. And, for the last eight of those 410 million years, they have had a very special place in the heart of macro photographer, mesofauna portraitist and UK native Andy Murray.
‘Springtails (Collembola) are diverse, complex, often intensely colourful, incredibly endearing and very tiny soil animals,’ Andy writes on his website “A Chaos of Delight”. ‘They aid with nutrient cycling in the soil, helping to form soil microstructure as well as being a ready supply of food for many predators.’
‘It’s hard not to anthropomorphise Collembola, especially the Symphypleona, the globular springtails who as their name suggests, are rounded rather than elongated or flattened. They look cute and chubby, often with big, black eye patches and a tendency to turn their heads upwards, as if they were looking back.’
A juvenile symphylan or garden centipede, Somerset, UK.
While he declares that ‘it’s no secret that Collembola are my beloved favourite amongst the myriad of different soil mesofauna’, Andy’s photographic interests now also extend to other important groups such as the proturans, diplurans, mites, pseudoscorpions, pauropods and more.
So familiar is Andy with his tiny subjects that he can often identify a given organism at a glance. ‘Yesterday,’ he said, ‘I was in a woodland and I saw a mite which was maybe half a millimetre long. I thought “Oh, that’s new. I haven’t seen that before.” It’s a wonderful feeling.’
Asked to what he attributes this gift for attention to detail, Andy replied matter-of-factly, ‘I suppose at the core of it is that I’m on the autistic spectrum and also I’ve got Tourette’s. It just means that I do things a little bit differently maybe. I can be very sensitive to noise and I like routine, so working by myself in caves and rainforests for weeks on end has suited me very well.
‘I’m incredibly focused – I have been all my life. When I’m interested in something, I just pursue it a hundred per cent. I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a kid, and as soon as I was old enough I just went out and became one. And the same thing happened with music. I decided I wanted to play an instrument so I taught myself flute, whistle, uilleann pipes – and got a band. [My ambition] was to play at the Glastonbury Festival. It took me about seven years but I ended up doing it. Then I stopped playing once I managed it and that was it [for music].’
A juvenile Temeritas species of springtail. North Queensland, Australia.
Although his fascination with Collembola emerged eight years ago, Andy had been intrigued by insects since childhood. ‘I was into writing nature journals when I was little,’ he said, ‘so I’d be watching spiders and insects and recording them. And then I got second prize in a painting competition when I was 10. I won a camera. But it wasn’t quite good enough, so I gave it to my mum and she swapped it for a Pentax MG. And that kept me going for a fair few years.’
With the advent of good digital cameras, his interest in picture taking surged. ‘I’d been thinking about photographing insects and macro stuff,’ he said. ‘It was my dream to explore this amazing world and digital was my way in.’
His first digital camera was a Canon 550 which, while certainly a good piece of equipment, would eventually be replaced with a 5D and Canon’s classic MP-E 65mm macro lens.
These days he’s onto his fourth iteration of the 5D and still relying on an MP-E, but not the original one. ‘The MP-E’s got no weatherproofing, so they get full of dust and I’ve ruined I think four or five lenses now.’
It’s easy to understand why he’s managed to wear out so many expensive optics when you hear how he talks about the life of the dedicated mesofauna photographer.
‘We’ll put ourselves through absolute hell to get one picture,’ he said. ‘I’ll be covered in leeches or bitten by mosquitoes, I’ll be risking scorpions and spiders, just because it’s bloody glorious. When you’re in these places, taking photographs with a backdrop of the most beautiful scenery, sounds, and bird calls, it’s joy.’
A Katianna species of springtail, known as the Montagu or party springtail. NW Tasmania, Australia.
Although Mesofauna are most abundant in leaf litter and soils of tropical rainforests, they are far less common in tunnels or caves. Even so, there are subjects for his lens and he is definitely not averse to a little spelunking.
‘I’m at my happiest when I’m deep in a cave system, looking for life to photograph,’ Andy says. Indeed, being more likely to experience claustrophobic sensations in a loud and crowded room, he positively looks forward to squirming through narrow passages in the pitch dark.
‘Oh my God, caving’s the best. It’s the most fun! When you combine caving and macro photography, honestly, it’s the ultimate,’ he said, adding, ‘I’ve walked down caves for three or four hours, quite dangerous caves where you occasionally have to swing off metal pegs in the walls or go down on your hands and knees. Caves are friendly places for me, they’re dangerous but they’re friendly and dangerous. It’s nice.
‘And then, when you find invertebrates down at that level, they’ve been there sometimes for millions of years and they’re completely different. If you put them in the light they’d die. It is such a privilege to go and see these animals interacting where there’s hardly any food, and there’s no light. And in caves, everything, predator and prey alike, moves very slowly.
‘They have adapted special sensory organs, or elongated hairs on their bodies and elongated antennae just so they can survive.’
A juvenile, undescribed species of Temeritas, a species of springtail known for their long antennae. North Queensland Australia.
Whether in a cave or in the gloom of jungle understory, the mesofauna that Andy photographs usually live in a world of utter darkness, so their response to a bright light source like his headlamp or his powerful flash, is not always predictable.
‘It depends on the species,’ Andy said. ‘Some don’t care, some hate it and some walk away from the light as soon as they see it.’
Emphasising that he never photographs his subjects under studio conditions, he adds, ‘The joy of it is actually going out into a rainforest or a cave, and just seeing what is there. Things can run away, or you’ll drop something or you mess up a shot and that’s that, you’ve got no way to recapture the moment. And that’s part of it. So nothing in my photographs has been staged. They’re all about as natural as I can get them, other than, obviously, they live in the dark and I’m putting light into their world.’’
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Article by Don Norris