First prize

This male cerambycid, like many longhorn beetles, has impressive antennae – in this case about 12cm from tip to tip – to detect and locate females, who produce a sex-attractant pheromone.

Wallace’s Cyriopalus beetle

Dr Tim Cockerill (East Yorkshire, United Kingdom)

Cyriopalus wallacei. First Prize 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category.

  • Beetles

Second prize

The facets of an emperor dragonfly’s eye in extreme close-up. The dragonfly was resting near a pond in the photographer’s home town of Palovec

Anax imperator eye

Peter Sabol

Second Prize 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Dragonflies and damselflies

Specially Commended

Portrait of a male feather-horned beetle, Rhipicera sp., seen in mid-April 2014 at Little Carine Swamp

Male feather-horned beetle

Kerry-Ann van Eeden

Specially Commended 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Beetles

Commended

A firefly spreading its wings ready to fly while generating light

Warming up, the light giver

Jose Ramos, II

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Beetles
A grasshopper (Lobosceliana sp., family Pamphagidae) hiding among the forest leaf-litter in East Mongu.

Blend in to survive

Lucia Chmurova

Grasshopper (Lobosceliana sp., family Pamphagidae). Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category.

  • Grasshoppers, crickets and bush-crickets
A bee photographed on a cold but sunny early morning in April, in the photographer’s back garden.

Warming up

Denise Bishop

A bee photographed on a cold but sunny early morning in April, in the photographer’s back garden. Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category.

  • Ants, bees, wasps and sawflies
Extreme close-up of the head of a bluebottle fly (Calliphora vomitoria). This photograph is composed of a focus-stack of 250 images

My annoying housemate

Adam Poledníček

Extreme close-up of the head of a bluebottle fly (Calliphora vomitoria). This photograph is composed of a focus-stack of 250 images. Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category.

  • True flies
Two nymphs of the painted (or gaudy) grasshopper Poekilocerus pictus on roadside vegetation at Dediyapada in Vadodara district, Gujarat state.

Grasshopper nymphs

Narayan Patel

Two nymphs of the painted (or gaudy) grasshopper Poekilocerus pictus on roadside vegetation at Dediyapada in Vadodara district, Gujarat state. Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category.

  • Grasshoppers, crickets and bush-crickets
Tachinid fly, Athrycia cinerea

Tachinid fly

Shelley Barkley

This tachinid fly (believed to be Athrycia cinerea) was reared in the laboratory from the larva of a noctuid moth (bertha armyworm, Mamestra configurata) that had been hand-collected from a field in central Alberta in August 2014.

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category.

  • True flies
Common snout-hoverfly, Rhingia campestris, on a green leaf

A snout of distinction

Rory Morrisey

A female common snout-hoverfly, Rhingia campestris, showing the long snout typical of this genus and this species’ distinctive dark line along the side of the abdomen.

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category.

  • True flies
Mayfly on a green plant stalk

Mayfly

Bob Eade

A mayfly photographed near the village of Arlington by the River Cuckmere in East Sussex.

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category.

  • Mayflies or upwing flies
An extreme close-up view of scales on the underside of the hindwing of a southern festoon butterfly, Zerynthia polyxena, found resting with close wings on a plant in a forest habitat near Palovec

Zerynthia polyxena wing

Peter Sabol, (Croatia)

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Butterflies and moths
Dorsal view of the head of a male migrant hawker dragonfly, Aeshna mixta, resting on a reed in Woodwalton Fen.

Migrant hawker

Paul Giles (Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom)

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Dragonflies and damselflies
Close-up portrait of a longhorn beetle on the branch of a fig tree in the photographer’s garden in Stamblovo

Longhorn beetle (close-up)

Martin Smith, (Haskovo, Bulgaria)

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Beetles
An acorn weevil, Curculio glandium, under an oak tree at the Stoneleigh Park showground in early May 2014.

Acorn weevil (Curculio glandium) on a stem of grass

Peter Paul Smith, (Warwickshire, England)

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Beetles
An unidentified fly in the photographer’s back garden in Suffolk in late June 2014.

‘Jeff Goldblum lookalike’ (unidentified fly)

Richard Davies, (Suffolk, United Kingdom)

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • True flies
A male big-bellied cricket, Bradiphorus dasiphus, in the Măcin Mountains of Romania. To Iuliana Dediu, the appearance of this sturdy cricket of the mountains is reminiscent of an armoured soldier.

Soldier

Mrs Iuliana Dediu (Brăila, Romania)

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

A male banded demoiselle, Calopteryx splendens, on vegetation at the photographer’s local reserve, Summer Leys near Earls Barton in Northamptonshire

Banded demoiselle, male

David William Harris, (Northamptonshire, United Kingdom)

Commended in 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Dragonflies and damselflies
This male mantis, Toxodera maculata, was photographed in the rainforest in Borneo. Its rather menacing posture, combined with its long (5cm) curved thorax and the leaf-like projections on its legs and body make it a strange sight.

Striking a Pose. Specially Commended 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful categor

Dr Tim Cockerill – (East Yorkshire, United Kingdom)

This male mantis, Toxodera maculata, was photographed in the rainforest in Borneo. Its rather menacing posture, combined with its long (5cm) curved thorax and the leaf-like projections on its legs and body make it a strange sight.

  • Mantises
An unusual view of the larva of a prominent moth (Notodonta sp.) found on an alder tree in the photographer’s garden in Genemuiden.

Dromedarius

Beverley Brouwer (The Netherlands)

Specially Commended 2014 NIW Photography Competition Small is Beautiful category

  • Butterflies and moths