After realizing that a lamp in his home in Norway was serving as an unfortunate light trap for insects, Pål Hermansen made an image of its contents. He emptied the winged bugs onto a light table left over from his slide photography days, he explains. Then he used a weak flashlight to illuminate the insects’ details.
“I wanted to express the chaos and diversity of this discovery but also to find some kind of composition,” he explains. “To me, it’s a visual reminder of the important and extreme diversity of animals around us that we take for granted.”
The image won Hermansen the honor of 2021 Close-up Photographer of the Year. More than 9,000 images were submitted from 56 countries into nine different categories.
Amanda Arnold is a senior editor.
