Good morning, Joel. How are you doing today? Good? All good
here? Thank you. Well, that's awesome, dude. Hey, speaking
of awesome, I gotta tell you you are going to be on the walls
of so many young adults and children because everybody loves insects and you have taken
that road. Is sweet. I wish everybody loved insects. We're trying to
get more people to care about them, for sure. Though. Well,
I appreciate having me on. I read that you do have that passion to
save them, and I can relate with you because when it comes to the
termin X man, I tell them keep your hands off my spiders, do
not touch my spiders whatsoever. That's right. Well, yeah, I don't
know how they discern between spiders and everything else, but it is. It's
really pretty critical that we start paying attention to everything, insects especially. You
know, what was it like to put this journey together? Because I mean,
for these insects to be in one place and you captured that image,
it's I can't I can't even catch a firefly, Jewel. Well, I
mean what we did is we would look at animals that the insects that would
fly into my porch lights, catch them up in a mason jar or an
empty cleaned out peanut butter jar with holes in the lid like you would at
summer camp as a kid, or set up sheets with powerful lights on them
to draw them in at night, Grab them up, put them in a
little containment tent or a shooting tent, photograph them for a few minutes,
and then release them back into the night sky right where they came from.
And so when they're in this little containment tent, they can move around all
they want. The flashes are very fast and they freeze motion, and the
insect can't really go anywhere. He's in a white room and a little white
room, you know, and we zoom in with a macro lens and photographs.
So it's and then we just let the designer do his thing and put
together a lovely book out of all of it. But it's about eighteen months
worth of work just on native insects in the brass get around during the pandemic,
and then some additional insects from from different places around the world. A
lot of zoos have very good invertebrate collections now as well. When you were
capturing the images of these insects. Were there any insects that you wanted to
find, something that you were really looking for and would be excited to see?
Oh, you know, I really like doing butterflies quite a bit.
Butterflies are fantastic, and obviously everybody loves butterflies or they should, so I'm
always game to do those. Beetles are also pretty easy to photograph andcome an
amazing variety of colors, shape sizes. So I guess I'm drawn to the
things that are very pretty or easy to photograph. Wasps are not. They're
often very beautiful, more colorful than I ever imagined, but they're very They're
a little trickier because they don't stop moving. Amps are the same way.
So yeah, I guess I'm drawn to the big, slow moving, colorful
things. These images, really, they're really beautiful. I'm curious, were
there any things you didn't want to see? No, we photograph anything that
we can. Anything that's you know, a grain of rice are bigger sizewise,
so we we are working on, you know, anything that we that
I can. We went to our family cabin in Minnesota last week and I
found a beetle that had come hatched out of a log at our cabin and
I photographed it too, you know, so, um, you know,
we we welcome all of them, whether they're whether they are a little startling
to look at, or they're very comforting, beautiful, big, small,
We love them all. That's what we have to do for the photomark.
We're trying to just show what biodiversity looks like at this point in time on
planet Earth. I've sat with my wife several times looking through this book because
she's a retired school teacher, and the one thing that we both agree on
is that we're hoping that this book, you know, kind of inspires people
to quit wanting to squish or exterminate these bugs. Yeah, I mean,
it's it's it's a long way to go to convince people that insects are very
beneficial, but they are. They're tremendously helpful to us in terms of providing
the fruits and vegetables that we eat and cleaning up the planet and keeping our
planet healthy. So it's it's a generational change though. Big ideas take about
a generation to get across, so we'll get there eventually, but it's just
going to take shows like this, discussions like this, books like this to
try to move the needle a little bit and get people to see insects in
a whole new light. And we hope that's what this book accomplishes. In
your studies over the past eighteen months, did you notice if insects have egos?
Because I know that a honeybee has got to have an ego. I
got a job to do and don't get in my way. Well, they
I don't know about egos, but they certainly are driven. Ants especially are
so social and communal, and they sacrifice their lives all the time for the
good of the hive, for the good of their their nests. But they
know bees do the same thing. A lot of insects that are social,
they really are. They have one track mind. They really just they work
for the benefit of each other. There's a lot to learn from insects,
I guess if you look at it that way, isn't there. Yeah,
Living down here in the South with hurricanes and tropical storms, I gotta tell
you, Joel, I look forward to that because that means new bugs are
on the way. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I'm glad that you like
them, and I wish that everybody would realize that they don't have to love
them, but they should respect them because they really do keep life on earth
going. We cannot live without them, and it's really time that people start
thinking about, well, maybe I'll quit using pesticides and herbicides on my lawn.
Maybe I'll plant more native plants. Maybe I love birds. Realize finally
that insects are what feed chicks. Birds feed feed insects to their babies to
grow them. Plus, there's lots of different things we can learn from insects,
but the first step is in meeting them. And hopefully this book has
enough enough varieties to catch everybody's interest and get them to think, oh,
you know what, these are pretty cool. Maybe I should think of them
as something other than things that I squish or pois. You bring up the
subject to birds and insects. A lot of people don't realize that the robin,
if they don't ant, then they're going to have all those little mites
all over them. They need ants to be a part of their life.
Oh is that right? I did not know that. Yeah, there's a
lot of symbiotic things. Yeah, that's the reason why they're always rolling around
in the dirt is because if they if they see an ant hill. Those
are those robins are going down there. They didn't need those ants. Interesting,
I didn't know that. Yeah, there's so many relationships too that are
undiscovered, aren't there. I learned that there are parasitic wasps that lay their
eggs in other living insects. Those insects are then doomed. You know,
the baby hatches out and eats the host. But there are parasitic wasps,
of parasitic wasps. It goes on and on and on. It's really complicated
and amazing. As as you've stepped into this world of insects, does that
mean that you're now the forever student when it comes to this, because I
mean you're on a journey that is changing everything. Well, I'm always curious.
I think that's what journalists have to be curious, and that's a big
thing that you either are or you're not, you know, as a personality,
but I am. So journalism made sense for me to go into.
I have a degree in reporting, and I think that, Yeah, it's
a journey and you never stop. I think if you stop, you get
it's not good. You need to keep learning and keep experimenting. And the
world's a wondrous place, you know, I know it's a pretty harsh place
at times, but it's still a wondrous place with a lot to learn.
And we'll never learn even a fraction of what we should as individuals that don't
live much past one hundred a lucky ones. But you know, we keep
going and and every day is I'm excited to get up every day and see
what see what I can get, see what goes on? Joel, do
you find yourself easily distracted now when you're supposed to be doing other projects,
or you're with your family or friends and you see bugs in the wild,
do you find yourself easily distracted to study what that bug may be and you
find yourself reaching from the camera. Yeah, I'm always looking, I'm always
thinking about it. You know. I read an interview with a talk show
host the other day. The thing was Jimmy Kimmel, and he was staying,
what people don't realize. There's the amount of work, Like if you're
a talk show host, a comedian, you're constantly you can't go to movies
or to a restaurant or anything without thinking would this make material? Would this
make material for my show? Well, for me, that's right. I
can't go on a fishing trip or drive down the road or whatever. I
can't if I'm out and it's warm and there are insects. I'm always thinking,
Man, do I have that one yet? That's really awesome? But
I catch that one in my little collection jar in time and get a picture
of it. It drives my family crazy, it just really But you know,
they're they're amazing, and it's the choices to delay the family a little
bit it catch something up to photograph it. Well, lots of times I'll
do that. What's amazing about your books, Joel, even with the animal
arcs, is the fact that it's almost like you're speaking to the future reader
in the way. That's sure. Sure, we're enjoying it right now,
but ten, fifteen, twenty five years from now, they're going to be
picking up these books because they're brand new to them. They're going to cherish
them just as much as we are. Well, I hope so that that's
kind of you. I mean, I hope so we hope the photo arc
outlives all of us. It's a really good record of what life on Earth
look like at this point in time across mammals, and birds and reptiles and
amphibians and fish and verebrates. So we're really hopeful that it doesn't just just
become the world's largest obituary, that people will realize that these other animals were
critical to our own survival. They make our world a better place, more
enriched, and they're all works of art that needs to be you know,
be shepherds and stewarted. Yeah. We hope, well, I mean,
we hope that's where I'm coming from, and hopefully other people would dream.
You got to come back to this show anytime in the future. The door
is always going to be open for you. Joel. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. Thanks for your enthusiasm. Will you be brilliant
today? Okay, okay,