I'd tentatively identify this as a Treehopper, Membracis, ssp.
Eighty four stacked exposures (two separate stacks combined) taken at about 4x lifesized. Pentax K3 with reverse mounted K 24mm f3.5. No extension other than the adapter rings used to reverse mount the lens.
An up close image of a Japanese Beetle - Popillia japonica:
These iridescent beetles love to much on almost anything that grows in your garden, and with the absence of any natural predators in North America, they are indeed a destructive pest.
This photo is a stack focused composite of 54 exposures taken in a single pass at roughly 5x lifesized magnification.
It is summertime and the cicadas are singing... These are insects often heard but less often seen, since they emerge from the ground and fly up into the nearest tree or other roost as soon as possible. This unfortunate individual did not successfully complete metamorphosis - one wind remained ill formed and the whole exuvia of its former shape was stuck to it. I found it thrashing helpless on the ground, so I snatched it up before the birds (or more likely my cat) got to it:
Cicada, Tibicen linnei
I would tentatively identify it as a male Tibicen linnei - the fact that there are only 10 species of cicada in Michigan helps make the id a little more easy.
This image is only 1.4x lifesized. It was made with a Pentax K3, DFA 100mm macro lens and extension tube. This is 232 images compiled in 2 separate stacks and then blended together.
I found this small bumble bee drowned in my cat's outdoor water dish. Don't know the species, but it was a fairly small bumble bee - about the length of a typical European Honey Bee but much stouter. A close up of its head (click on the image for a larger file):
Bumble Bee
Pentax K3 with reverse mounted SMC K 24mm f3.5, no additional extension (about 2.5x life sized.) Two separate stacks combined, 111 exposures total.
Common names for these are Cave Crickets, Camel Backed Crickets, Spider Cricket, etc... they live in darkness, eat mold and fungus, and are just kind of ichy.
Cave Cricket (family Rhaphidophoridae)
One of my cats goes crazy whenever she sees one of these. She invariably winds up killing and eating them and then .... let's just say they don't agree with her digestion. Oh well...
I shot this a few weeks ago but screwed up and the pin it was mounted on was visible so I cropped in about 20%to eliminate it - made the top of the frame a little tight (I would like to show more of the antennae). 45 stacked images in a single run. DFA 50mm f2.8 macro reverse mounted with minor extension - approx 2x lifesized.
I keep looking for non-insect subjects for stack focused macro photos - they are surprisingly hard to find. I noticed the grey headed coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata) in my prairie plant garden have started budding - so study of the flower bud and its wonderful spiral pattern that suggests the Fibonacci sequence:
Grey Headed Coneflower Bud
That photo is at 4.5x lifesized magnification - here's the full flower at 1x lifesized:
Grey Head Coneflower
Both images are focused stacked - the top image is made from 60 images in two separate stacks, which were then combined. The bottom image is made from 95 stacked images - I did not expect to need to stack so much for such a low magnification photo, but sheer depth of the subject - roughly 15mm - meant that it took a lot of images to get from front to back.
I've been keeping watch for interesting insects to photograph, including watching for carpenter ants. So I was pleasantly surprised to stumble onto this very large carpenter ant (Camponotus spp.) yesterday morning:
Carpenter Ant Queen
This ant is roughly 15mm in length. It was dead, laying on the pavement. Base on its size alone, it appears to be a female Carpenter Ant. Looking at it closely shows spots on the thorax where the wings had recently fallen off, so it was probably a recently emerged female looking for a place to nest.
I'm not sure what killed it, but it was near a part of the house that had been treated for a carpenter ant infestation a few years ago. It may have encountered some residual pesticide.
This photo was made at about 2.5x life-sized, which is the magnification that the SMC K 24mm f3.5 yields when reverse mounted onto a DSLR with no additional extension. This image is 50 separate exposures stacked together with Zerene Stacker.