AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Insects in backlight and dramatic light, above all red wood ants
- Works in
- Color
- Camera
- Canon 5D Mark III and Canon 7D with the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens (2018 list)
- Also
- Works as a water pump mechanic; builds his own lenses, filters and flashes
Leon Baas is a Dutch macro photographer with a great passion for insects. He often shows them in backlight and dramatic color, and he builds much of his own equipment. His photographs have appeared in National Geographic and BBC Wildlife Magazine, and he teaches macro workshops and gives lectures.
The story
Close to a small fen in the woods, Leon Baas found a nest of red wood ants. Ants had always been his favorite subject. Yet he had never managed to photograph red wood ants spraying formic acid. This nest was different. Damselflies were attacking it, diving down in short flights to catch ants. “I had never seen this before,” he said. Until then he had thought damselflies only caught insects in flight.
Before each attack, the damselflies first landed close to the nest. He suspects they did this to take on the smell of the nest, so the ants would not see them as intruders. It did not always work. Some were sprayed with acid again and again, and a few became prey themselves. In the end he made a series that shows the whole process. “All in all, a spectacle I will not soon forget,” he said.
As a small child, he already searched the bushes for strange little creatures. Later he got an old Ricoh camera. “Nice pictures, but nothing more,” is how he remembers the results. He shot film and developed his own photos in a darkroom. For a long time he wanted nothing to do with digital cameras. Then photo forums appeared, and it became useful to upload images, so digital took over.
With a digital SLR and a good macro lens, he once photographed an insect in backlight by chance. At the time this was very unusual. Insects were mostly photographed in a plain way, and from then on he worked hard to bring tension into his pictures. He read many old books about photography. By trade he repairs water pumps, and he loves tinkering. He takes lenses apart and puts them back together in strange ways, and he has built his own macro wide-angle lens and a fibre-optic flash for soft backlight. A ladybird drinking from a drop of water and two sawfly larvae on the edge of a leaf show the mood he looks for.
The ant nest still gave him a goal. In 2018 he said he would be very happy to catch a damselfly and acid-spraying ants in the same frame. For him, the photograph is a way to share a world few people know, right under their feet. “Making the invisible visible, for a better future for people and nature. That is my drive.”
The work
- 2005Joins the Dutch photo community Zoom.nl
- 2008Smashing Magazine includes two of his photographs in a selection of macro shots
- 2010Joins Flickr, describing himself as a self-taught macro photographer from the Netherlands
- 2017Photographs damselflies attacking a nest of red wood ants
- 2018Natuurfotografie.nl publishes a portfolio of his work
- 2018Gives a lecture on red wood ants and a macro masterclass at the Nature Talks Photo Festival
Lessons
Go back to your favorite subject. Ants were always his main subject, and patience at one nest gave him a series no one had shown before.
Build what you cannot buy. He makes his own macro wide-angle lens, filter, tripod and fibre-optic flash to get the light he wants.
Keep your own line. He says that if you hold to strict criteria for every photo, a personal style comes by itself.
Try this: find an ant on a twig and follow it with your camera ready. Wait until it stops at the end of the twig, then shoot from eye level or a little lower, against the light.
Gear
In 2018 he published his equipment list with Natuurfotografie.nl. It mixes Canon gear with old lenses and tools he made himself.
Canon EOS 5D Mark III: one of his two main camera bodies, next to a Canon 7D.
Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens: a special lens for very high magnification. He also used a Tamron 90mm macro, a Tokina 35mm macro and a Laowa 15mm.
Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX: a twin macro flash, one of several Canon flashes he uses.
Cognisys high-speed shutter: for photographing insects in flight.
His own inventions include a macro wide-angle lens, a filter he calls the LB Magic filter, a tripod for the most impossible angles and a fibre-optic flash for subtle backlight. He also carries a notebook with a waterproof pen.
