Andrena minutula - frontal, Heesch, Netherlands

A frontal 5x macro stack of this species:

"Making of" notes:

To start positively, what I like about this image is it dynamic composition. The slightly diagonal approach and its antennae coming at the viewer makes it almost pop out of the frame, which I think is cooler than a straight-on angle. Although far from perfect, I also like the dramatic lighting. A lot of macro stackers try to get perfect uniform light from all angles, in order to bring out maximal details across the subject. It's just a matter of taste, but I prefer more dynamic lighting.

Lighting in this case was done using flash, compared to my earlier continuous light approach. I find flash-based results much better than continuous light. The reason is simple: it adds so much light that you can use a faster shutter speed, this is my only weapon against enemy #1 in extreme macro: micro vibration.

At 5x macro, everything seems to vibrate. It could be slight wind in the room, the washing machine in the next room, somebody walking, a car passing by. Some counter this by putting their setup on a concrete floor (removes shake from table itself) and then add dampening rubber feet and run their stack at night.

Flash for stacking has its downsides though. It depletes batteries rapidly and flash units really aren't made for such intense usage. They can overheat, vary output between shots, or simply fail and skip a shot, ruining the entire stack.

Anyway, given my beginner level, I was happy as a child when this came out of the stacking software. The problem with this hobby is that it's quite self-defeating. When happy, you just turn up the dial of self criticism, and now I see this image differently: it has tons of flaws. But ah well.