i took this macro photo today of the developing embryos....

[Gato Moteado]

...inside an egg mass laid by a red eyed tree frog.

[elleng]

1. WOWOWOWOW!

[AndyS]

2. nice!

[mike_c]

3. egg-cellent!

It's so cool seeing them developing atop their yolk masses.

[progressoid]

4. Whatcha using for equipment?

[Gato Moteado]

12. i have a variety of equipment....

....from nikon to sony to lumix (panasonic) and olympus

for that shot i used my lumix G9 with olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro lens and a godox on-camera flash with a custom made diffuser.

what kind of gear are you using?

[progressoid]

18. Nothing special.

I don't do a lot of micro. Just have some close up tubes.

[WestMichRad]

5. Fascinating picture!

Would be really cool to see similar pictures of the egg mass each day as the embryos develop.

[Gato Moteado]

13. i thought about doing that exact thing....

....and the challenges it will bring.

those were eggs i rescued that were laid over the soil on the edge of a concrete pool. when the tadpoles would hatch, they would have ended up falling onto the ground (missing the water by a couple inches) and dying. it's likely that the weight of the pair of red eyed tree frogs in amplexus caused the banana leaf to hang over the water, but when they finished with the eggs and left the leaf, it returned to its position. so, i cut the section of leaf off, brought it in the house, photographed them and clamped the section of leaf over a small plastic tank with water and this morning they started hatching and falling in the water.

so, the challenges with doing this with eggs that are in the place they are laid include:

1. being in a spot where they are hard to get close to with a macro lens (i.e. hanging over water, etc)
2. there's always a breeze blowing and when you are shooting this close with a macro lens, your depth of field is razor thin, so the focal target continuing to sway in and out of the focal plane makes it impossible to nail the focus.
3. there are tons of predators here that feast on the eggs (cat eyed snakes, ants, katydids, wasps, etc) and some eggs dry up or succumb to fungus, so there is no guarantee that the egg mass will be intact for the entire cycle

bringing inside a freshly laid glob of eggs has its challenges, but mainly the section of leaf you cut will dry fairly quickly and start to curl around the eggs....i guess you could affix the section to something flat so it doesn't curl, but it's still going to dry out.

one possible solution i'm thinking about is putting various potted heliconias in large pots around one of the ponds or tanks and when a nice egg mass is laid on the underside of a leaf, just take the whole potted plant in the house for the week or 10 days and shoot the eggs, without cutting the leaf off, and in the house where there's no wind and where i can position the eggs in my studio to make it easy to photograph them.

[WestMichRad]

17. Thank you for the detailed answer.

I had no idea of the underlying complexities!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. Astonishing and fascinating and wow, my dear Gato! This is a real capture. nt

[PatSeg]

7. That's amazing!

[Handler]

8. Very cool

[Grumpy Old Guy]

9. Truly amazing!

[2naSalit]

10. Amazing!

[thatcrowwoman]

11. Wow! This gave me goosebumps, and I'm not quite sure why.

Grandma Shorty said it’s the Spirit moving.
Maybe it’s this testimony that in a world on fire, full of tumult, Mother Nature endures.
Many thanks, Gato Moteado, for sharing your vision here.
🕊thatcrowwoman

[Gato Moteado]

14. thank you everyone for your nice comments!

[Callalily]

15. I know that when I open any of your threads,

I am truly blown away. This photo does not disappoint.

[Gato Moteado]

16. thank you...i get a lucky shot every now and then

and as always, you are too kind.