Mating Delta Flower Scarabs

bugman

July 27th, 2008 at 12:00 am

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bug love

mating on a passion flower
West central Georgia, USA, July 25, 2008.
Copyright (c) 2008 by Wayne Floyd

Hi Wayne,
You didn’t indicate if you wanted your mating Delta Flower Scarabs, Trigonopeltastes delta, identified. The photo is lovely, but we cropped and rotated it so it would better fit our site.

Daniel,
Yes, thank you for the ID. Regarding the crop and rotate… it actually does bother me. You said it “would better fit our site.” Yet, there are other horizontal images, both before and after mine. The thing is: everyone knows passion flowers are horizontal. I don’t even know if these scarabs mate in vertical orientation, but I know it’s not natural to be looking at a vertical passion flower. Hopefully, you have a fresh, uncropped image still in your Email. Or, I can send you a new one. Or, if my contribution really does not fit your sit in its intended form, you certainly should remove it. Thank you,
Wayne Floyd

hi Wayne,
it is not a matter of vertical versus horizontal, but about the standard width of three inches that we post At three inches wide, an uncropped horizontal image would be very small. Some photos we run six inches wide, but only rarely. We will reformat at your request tomorrow morning. Sorry about taking the artistic license. On a more conceptual note, most insect photos are shot from above, and when the photographer is looking down, up is behind the camera, making vertical and horizontal totally arbitrary. Have a great day.