Associate Editor, Science

Thanks to a time stamp, Thorben Danke knows the exact moment he got hooked on photographing insects. On July 22, 2016, at 6:05 p.m. he happened to see a green bottle fly sitting near him on his garage wall. Danke had been playing around with the settings on his pricy new digital camera, learning how to focus on closer subjects. He snapped a photo of the fly, and when he looked at the shot on his computer, he was amazed. The quality was so good that he could see the ommatidia, or individual units, of the insect’s compound eyes.

“From that point on, I was drawn into macrophotography,” he writes in an email, “driven by the overwhelming beauty of insects and the fascination with these little jewels on my doorstep.”

Sky Beetle Leg
The front leg of a sky beetle, or Anoplophora glabripennis—also known as the Asian long-horned beetle. The species has been accidentally introduced to many places, including the United States and several countries in Europe. Thorben Danke

Now, insect photography is a consuming hobby for the 42-year-old industrial electronics engineer. Danke lives on the outskirts of Besigheim, Germany, a rural region known for wine growing, and shoots any kind of local insect he can get his hands on, mostly in his home studio. He posts the results on social media sites like X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, where he has tens of thousands of followers. The photos have gained worldwide attention—and have been used by everyone from a scientist at Oxford to the filmmakers of Netflix’s “Life on Our Planet.”

“His photography is first-rate,” says Floyd Shockley, the collections manager for the Department of Entomology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “I mean, really, the quality of the images is amazing, the variety.”

Parasite Wasp
A portrait of Torymus calcaratus, a parasite wasp Thorben Danke

Danke has a lot of subjects to choose from. There are about 900,000 different known kinds of living insects, and they represent about 80 percent of all of the identified species—from plants to animals—in the world. At any given point in time, ten quintillion insects are alive. But insects are also in trouble. More than 40 percent of insect species are in decline and about a third of studied species are threatened with extinction.

Some scientists who have spent their careers studying insects see captivating images like Danke’s as important. “Maybe at the heart of conserving insects is to be able to see them and connect with them,” says Hollis Woodard, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, “and these images are obviously a great way to do that.”

Orache Moth Wing Scales
The wing scales of an orache moth, Trachea atriplici Thorben Danke

Shockley agrees that Danke’s photography is complementing the work of scientists and conservationists. “Showing insects in a different way, showing how beautiful they can be, showing how scary they can be when you look at them up close—it’s a different role, but it’s an important one in communicating about the importance of biodiversity.”

Over the last several years, Danke’s alluring images have evolved from single shots into works created from hundreds of pictures. To capture tiny parts of the creatures in perfect focus, Danke puts his camera on a high-precision macro rail that can move in the micrometer—one millionth of a meter—range. The device allows him to make adjustments that are thinner than the diameter of a human hair. He takes magnified shots of different insect body parts that are at varying distances from his lens—to capture each in sharp detail. Then he combines all his pictures together, in a photographic process known as focus stacking, to show the creatures in stunning detail. Without many ready-made instruction guides for such photography on the market, he does a lot of do-it-yourself setups, and has progressed to the point now where his photographic process is automated.

Dor Beetle
Portrait of a dor beetle Thorben Danke

Eventually, Danke realized his subjects needed to be dead; stillness is a prerequisite, because he needs those hundreds of photos to make one image. He gets insects from many places. Friends and family put dead insects on his kitchen windowsill, and he looks for them there when he gets home. Followers on social media send him specimens in the mail, sometimes wrapped in tissues and placed in small boxes. Rejected insects from biodiversity researchers and natural history museums are also sent to his home.

Danke only photographs insects from Central Europe. “You don’t have to travel to tropical regions to discover the beauty of insects,” he writes. “The insects on your doorstep are in no way inferior to their tropical relatives in terms of their variety of shapes and colors.”

Often, preparing the insects to be photographed takes more time than shooting them. Tiny amounts of dirt can ruin an image, so Danke focuses on carefully cleaning his subjects without destroying them. And he’s learned how to fix things like crooked legs and dried-out eyes.

Water Bug Hind Leg
The hind leg of a water bug known as the common backswimmer, Notonecta glauca Thorben Danke

His preparation process can take months, or even longer. At his first exhibition in his hometown, a woman handed him a cigar box with a death’s-head hawkmoth inside. Until that point, Danke had only seen the species on the movie poster for The Silence of the Lambs. The photographer wanted to capture the species from every side with its wings open, but the specimen had folded wings. He spent more than a year researching techniques for softening and unfolding the wings before remounting the specimen and creating a high-resolution panorama.

One of the most rewarding parts of the work for Danke is when entomologists say they are captivated by his images. He loves when students add his shots to publications or presentations to teach others. And he felt especially honored when British entomologist George McGavin showed some of his images on a large screen during a presentation at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Cuckoo Bee
Portrait of a cuckoo bee from the genus Nomada Thorben Danke

One of Danke’s favorite images is of a curled-up cuckoo wasp, which was selected as one of National Geographic’s science photos of the year in 2021. People inspired by that image have painted the creature, embroidered it and even had it tattooed on their skin. But the lensman says that likely isn’t his most viewed image. So that viewers could “fly around” insects in the Netflix series “Life on Our Planet,” Danke took his image-making a step further. He placed an insect on a rotating station and went through his photographic process, then turned the station a few tenths of a degree and went through his process again. He photographed individual insects at up to 125 angles and took thousands of pictures of each one. (You can see the result of his work in episode three.)

All over our planet, insect declines are being driven by habitat changes from agriculture and urbanization, the use of genetically modified crops, the overuse of pesticides and climate change. Every year, another 1 percent of all insect species are added to the list of those threatened with extinction.

Giant Horsefly Eye
This close-up of an eye of a pale giant horsefly, Tabanus bovinus, showcases the individual units of the compound eye called ommatidia Thorben Danke

Woodard, who has worked with bumblebees her whole career, says a quarter to a third of the 250 or so bumblebee species are threatened with extinction. And that’s not even the complete picture, as many species are data deficient and so can’t be assessed yet. “So they’re probably also more threatened,” she says. “We just can’t officially say it.”

She adds that high-quality photos can help conservationists identify specific problems. For example, macro photos that show asymmetry in insect body parts may be an indication that an animal experienced stress in its lifetime. And images that show sensory hairs on different body parts may help entomologists think about how certain animals behave.

Death's Head Hawkmoth Caterpillar
A death’s-head hawkmoth, Acherontia atropos, caterpillar Thorben Danke

Many people appreciate the beauty and importance of pollinators like bumblebees and butterflies, but Danke’s images inspire viewers to see even the most loathed insects in a different light. He loves to capture portraits of flies and wasps—animals often viewed as troublesome. “By meeting them at eye level, we recognize their beauty, we treat them with respect and begin to understand how wonderful nature can be,” he writes.

Shockley points out humans can make changes to improve insects’ chances: by refraining from using broad-spectrum pesticides, adding native plants to their yards, letting fallen leaves stay (firefly larvae, for instance, hang out in leaf litter) and changing their exterior lights to a different frequency, such as a red spectrum, so that the creatures aren’t attracted.

Death's Head Hawkmoth
The death’s-head hawkmoth can make a squeaking sound when alarmed Thorben Danke

A childlike curiosity keeps driving Danke to capture more creatures. He says he discovers something new in almost every photo he takes, and loves to inspire similar feelings of awe in others. This fall, he is taking the next step in his career by publishing a book with hundreds of his images. He hopes the text will be translated into English.

The book is just his latest effort to help the creatures get the respect and credit he says they deserve. “Insects create the biological foundation of our ecosystem, in which they play a crucial role,” writes Danke. “They aerate the soil, pollinate blossoms and recycle nutrients back into the soil. We should be very grateful that they allow us to share their planet.”

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Joe Spring is the associate digital science editor for Smithsonian magazine.