Minute Wild: Ants at Lake Talquin

Recorded at Lake Talquin State Forest, March 29, 2020. It was exceptionally hot and difficult to see the screen down on the ground for this little scene. I moved the camera halfway through (before this scene starts) and didn’t notice until I got back off of the trail later that the hole was out-of-focus. What a disappointment! I nearly hiked back to this spot to try again, but on second thought, I began to like this shot. Individual ants take “center stage” here. Instead of thinking about the ants as part of an abstract collective, the viewer is encouraged to “know” the ants who venture into focus. This sheds new light on the individuals at work here and casts their little society in a different shade.