Once I saw an ant in a small puddle of water struggling hard to swim out. I remained under the impression that ants are not good swimmers and would probably work hard to stay away from finding themselves in water.

So, I started thinking of a way to put them in that kind of a predicament and eventually, I worked with what I had at my disposal and the following set up came to my mind.

I filled a shallow bowl with water and placed e regular electrical outlet, slightly submerged in the water. I used the hole, where the wire usually goes, to stick a flowering part of a weed into it and when I was done, It looked like the following image:

You may place your camera on a mono pod or whatever you are comfortable with. Also, use your remote flash trigger, a flash sync chord or a flash bracket for off-camera lighting. You may want to place a diffuser on the flash, or in front of the flash, if it's triggered remotely or via a flash chord. Also, if you are not using two flashes, place a reflector on the other side of the bowl, opposite to the flash. Now, you are ready to go after those ants!

Tips:

1. You may want to place the set up on the edge of a table as this will make it easier for you to use your mono pod. it also makes a longer cession easier on your back.

2. Notice how the colorful papers behind the bowl are sticking up. You may place some additional paper or other object under the paper to elevate them to at least to the same hight as the bowl. this will reduce your light falloff and you will have a brighter and more colorful background.

3. The ants will run up and down the plant in an effort to find a way out. They will never stop unless they are truly exhausted and this may take quite some times! If you find it difficult to chase them, just try to focus and be ready for them in their usual path. They will also, now and then, stop to clean their antennae thinking that their navigation system is at fault, this is a good time to shoot as well.

In the following set of images you will see a shot or two which were taken at moments such as these. You will also see one shot taken when the ant took a rest and start to meditate a way out !!

4. They will, now and then, fall in the water and it will take them rather some times to swim to the edge of the bowl, just place them back on the plant.

5. the distance between the ant and the background paper should be sufficient for a F16 shot at 1:1. If you find out that it is not and you are not getting the diffused background that you you'd like, just pull the plant to edge of the bowl closer to the camera. You may also use this set up for a lager object such as a flower but make sure to place your colored objects further away from the subject. The further away your subject from the camera, or smaller your aperture (higher F number), the further away your background objects should be.

6. If you need reflectors, this vendor at Ebay sells some rather good ones for really cheap. These are 5 in one, four reflectors and one diffuser for as little as $13.00 He also sells good and inexpensive flash brackets No affiliations whatsoever, just passing the info.

Good luck, happy shooting and shoot in raw if you can.

PS: At higher magnification, your field of view is too narrow. So, if you'd like to have more than one color in the background, try to shoot in a way where your background falls at the intersection of two colored objects or just place smaller objects or strips of papers in the background.

The following 6 images were taken using this method. The last four were taken in non controlled environment. The very last one was taken at a birthday party, outside in the yard and the ant was running on the edge of a white flowering pot.