Insect finder: identify any insect from a photo
From beetle to dragonfly to grasshopper — how to capture and submit the right photo for fast, accurate insect identification.
Getting the right photo: angles and focus tips for insects
Insect photography for identification purposes has different priorities than insect photography for aesthetic reasons. A beautiful bokeh background with the insect slightly out of focus produces an attractive image but a poor identification photo. For identification, sharpness across the key diagnostic features matters far more than artistic composition. The most useful single angle for most insects is from directly above (dorsal), showing the full back, wing surface, and body outline clearly. The second most useful is a lateral view (side profile) showing the leg structure, body depth, and head shape. For beetles, a view of the underside — the prosternum, leg attachment points, and tarsal segments — resolves many difficult genera. Close-up mode on a modern smartphone produces excellent results if the phone is held steady; using a flat surface or a beanbag support eliminates camera shake for extreme close-ups.
What to note when you can't photograph an insect
Fast-flying insects — dragonflies, hawkmoths, many day-flying moths — rarely stay still long enough for a photo, and some nocturnal species are encountered only briefly. In these cases, developing a rapid mental checklist of what to observe in the seconds available makes all the difference. Size is the first priority: compare the insect to a familiar object if possible — is it smaller than your thumbnail, roughly the size of your little finger, or larger? Color pattern on the body and wings comes next, followed by behavior (how it was flying, where it settled, what it was doing) and habitat. Even incomplete notes recorded immediately afterward, before memory fades, are often sufficient to narrow an identification to two or three candidates that can be resolved later with reference materials. Writing field notes — even brief ones — is a skill worth developing alongside the photography habit.
Building a personal insect record and why it matters
Every insect observation you record — species, date, location, count, habitat notes — contributes to your personal knowledge base and, if shared, to scientific datasets used in conservation. Insects are experiencing some of the most dramatic population declines of any animal group globally, with studies in Germany and elsewhere documenting losses of 70 percent or more in overall flying insect biomass over 25 years. The causes are multiple and interact: agricultural intensification, habitat loss, light pollution, climate change, and pesticide exposure. Long-term citizen-science datasets that track insect populations over time are essential for understanding these trends and measuring the effectiveness of conservation measures. Submitting your observations to platforms that aggregate data means that your garden records contribute to this bigger picture. InsectLens makes the identification step fast enough that recording what you find becomes a natural extension of noticing it.
FAQ
Can InsectLens identify insects from a photo I took in the past?
Yes. You can import any photo from your camera roll into InsectLens for identification, not just photos taken in real time. Adding a location tag to the imported observation is important for regional filtering — the app uses location to prioritize species that actually occur in the area where the photo was taken. If you have a photo from a trip to another region, select that location manually to get the most relevant results.
Is it possible to identify insect eggs or larvae, not just adult insects?
InsectLens can identify many common immature stages — caterpillars, beetle larvae in context, egg masses, and chrysalises — though accuracy is generally lower than for adult insects because the database contains fewer images of immature stages. Caterpillars are the best-covered immature stage; many species have distinctive and recognizable larval forms. For other larvae, providing contextual information — what plant they were found on, the habitat, and the region — significantly improves the match.
What is the best time of year to find and photograph insects?
In temperate Northern Hemisphere regions, insect diversity and abundance peaks from late May through August, with the highest species richness usually in June and July. However, each month offers something different: early spring brings bumblebee queens, overwintering butterflies, and early beetles; autumn concentrates migrant hoverflies and the last generation of many butterfly species; even winter produces active insects on mild days — winter gnats, winter moths, and various flies remain active at temperatures near freezing. Tropics and subtropics support insect activity year-round, and diversity can be extremely high throughout the wet season. Whatever the season, sunny, calm, warm mornings in meadow and hedgerow habitats are consistently the most productive conditions for encountering a wide range of species.
See what's really crawling, flying, and buzzing past.
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