in What Bees See: Bees and Their Importance to You and Me (Chronicle, $40), Craig P. Burrows' ultraviolet-lit photography mimics the fluorescence that plant subjects emit when exposed to sunlight, revealing colors and textures normally hidden by the glare of visible light. I'll make it. Because bees can see in the ultraviolet spectrum, Burrows' method provides a glimpse into the world as they perceive it. His plant portraits, in part, encourage empathy between species at a time when bees are under attack on multiple fronts, including from the sky. Contamination with pesticides.
in In these exquisitely intimate close-ups of French lavender, creeping fuchsia, and cucumber blossoms, each specimen sparkles and pulses with an otherworldly light against a jeweler's velvet-black background.
While the accompanying text describes honey bees and their vitally important place in the Earth's ecosystems (approximately 35 percent of food crops rely on insect pollinators), the photo itself is more about honeybees than anything else. Research on plants that serve as food.
Under Burroughs' ultraviolet lamp, the pistils and stamens, stigmas and anthers glow with colors like distant planets or deep-sea bioluminescent creatures, at once foreign and familiar. Rather than simply simulating the bee's perspective, these hallucinatory images help us imagine an alternate reality, one of creatures whose fate is inseparably tied to our own.