BN FAVES: SEE THE INVISIBLE BEAUTY OF LITTLE WINGS

This week we are celebrating Beautiful Favorites. The BN team put together a selection of some of our favorite Daily Fix posts, pulled from the BN Archives. Here is a favorite from the BN Nature Science Collection. You will never look at butterflies the same way again.

LINDEN GLEDHILL

While they have long been a favorite subject of artists and photographers, nobody does butterfly wings quite like photographer Linden Gledhill. He gets so close, and he transforms these wings into works of art.

A biologist by training, Gledhill develops biopharmaceuticals to treat cancer and diabetes at an international pharmaceutical company. He combines his interests in science with his passion for photography to explore the wonders of butterfly and moth wings at the cellular level.

The wing colors are vibrant and iridescent, mostly achieved by physical structure and not pigments. The wings are made of very thin layers of chitin, a hardened protein -- a derivative of glucose.

Similar to solar panels, the wings absorb heat from the sun to keep the butterfly warm and energized, similar to the way solar panels work.

Gledhill uses advanced microscopy and high speed equipment. He uses an Olympus BHT metrology microscope fitted with a StackShot drive, together with LED lighting and high-speed flash to create the images.

Gledhill has produced images for ad campaigns, books, album covers, and snowboard designs.  

Gledhill’s subjects are mostly preserved specimens from farm-raised butterflies and moths, many from a company called Butterflies And Things.

Check out more of Gledhill’s Beautiful Wings and other spectacular images on his Flickr.

Gledhill created images for a recently produced short film, The Curse of the Sunset Starlet, starring Oscar nominated Sally Kirkland, written and directed by Lori Precious.

It is a family drama about a challenging and mysterious relationship between Zarianne, an artist who  creates portraits entirely out of butterfly wings, and her mother Gigi, an aging former Hollywood starlet who just might be a drifter, a grifter or even a ghost.

Only Zarianne’s sons, Tate and Ryder, a mysterious swarm of Sunset Moths seem to hold the secret truth.

Watch the trailer here.

Read more about Beautiful Faves in Chill on a House Float in the Middle of the Bright Blue Sea.

And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact Daily Fix posts.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Sunset Moth.
2. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Citharias Aurorina Wing.
3. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Salamis Parhassus Butterfly Wing Scales.
4. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Rhetus Dysoni Wing.
5. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Butterfly Wing.
6. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Sunset Moth.
7. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Species?
8. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Pollen Grain On Protographium Agesilaus Butterfly Wing.
9. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Sunset Moth Wing.
10. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Sunset Moth Wing.
11. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Small hoppers, Peru.
12. Image: by Linden Gledhill. Citharias Aurorina Wing.
13. Image: Courtesy of BeautifulNow. BN App.
14. Image: Courtesy of BeautifulNow. BN App.