Just Another Bug Hunt

I had a number of different ideas for my short documentary piece, but this one sprang about fairly spontaneously, and I wound up satisfied enough with it to stick with it. My roommate is a biology major and he has to collect bugs for one of his classes, so sometimes I accompany him to take photographs. With this piece, I tried to capture what the experience is like. It's sometimes slow, sometimes boring, and sometimes a little frustrating when you almost catch a bug but it gets away. When you do wind up catching a bug, there's a certain sense of sadness to it, as they have to be killed in order to mount them later. I tried to capture that aspect by getting close-ups of the bug and the jar, which was pretty difficult given how spontaneous the whole process was. I'm not completely satisfied with this piece, especially with the erratic camera movement and focus pulls, which is sort of due to the unpredictable nature of these bug hunts. In a way, though, perhaps they make the experience more authentic, as it's closer to what you'd experience if you were to go on one of these trips.