“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower…”.

Wise words from William Blake, and truly at the heart of Andy Murray’s macro photography journey.

My name is Andy Murray and for the last fourteen years I have been studying, photographing and writing about springtails and the other soil animals that make up the soil mesofauna. I document their lives on a website, chaosofdelight.org and try to pass on the unshakable and profound love and respect I have for these beautiful, tiny lives and the hidden world they sustain.

All images and descriptions courtesy of Andy Murray

“I’ve genuinely not found anything that brings me as much joy as walking into a woodland or forest, not knowing what might be there, and sitting there with my loupe, a camera and a leaf or log, looking at soil animals.” - Andy Murray; writer, macro-photographer & copy editor for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)

I grew up with two loves- archaeology and nature. I had an insatiable curiosity and drive to find out everything I could about everything, filling in the gaps in my knowledge wherever I could. Apart from reading, field-walking and digging holes, my biggest joy was was looking the small, quiet things- the tiny jumping spiders on my bedroom desk, the slimy orange spots of fungus growing across the wet garden fence in winter, the crazy aimless speed of the red spots running across the hot, lichen-covered garden wall every summer. I used to love lifting up the tumbles of aubrieta, thick in purple flowers and watch another world silently scrambling away from the light. It was a world I desperately wanted to explore but my magnifying glass wasn’t strong enough and my microscope was too highly powered.

Life happened. I grew up and became an archaeologist, which was as genuinely cool as I had hoped it would be as a child. Then, more life happened and I found myself working as a juggler and clown, a gardener, a musician and a chef. But I never forgot my other childhood love.

Affordable laptops came along, then good quality digital cameras, offering the possibility of detailed and immediate images together an infinite amount of tries to get it right. Over the next few years, highly detailed macro photos of bees, beetles and tiny jumping spiders began appearing on the new photo platforms. It was perfect for me. In 2011, I bought my first proper camera and a 100mm macro lens and excitedly began to photograph woodlice and beetles. But after a while, the magnification just wasn’t enough. I tried adding extension tubes and tried reverse lenses, which got me to x2 magnification, but it still fell far short of what I had imagined.

At the time, I had taken a grainy, low-quality photo of an unknown and very small creature with my first macro setup. Trying to find out what it was eventually took me to Wikipedia where I read for the first time about these beautiful, complex, multicoloured animals called springtails. How had I not heard of these amazing animals before? I immediately succumbed and bought a still expensive second-hand Canon MPE lens (a renowned niche macro lens that went to x5 magnification) and the world of soil and the very small was finally laid out in front of me.

Andy photographing soil mesofauna in Mexico.

The Wikipedia article on springtails also described the incredible-looking giant springtails of New Zealand and Australia. Over the next year, with my usual single-minded determination, unearned self-belief and endless study online, I became increasingly sure that I needed to go and find and photograph them myself. At the start of 2014, I left my home and job behind and flew to the other side of the world with a rucksack and a camera bag. And giant springtails were even more incredible than I had imagined. The trip then grew into nearly three years of travelling around the world, exploring temperate and tropical rainforests, photographing the dark, hidden, vibrant world of springtails, mites and pauropods and forgetting to look up at paradise.

Since then, I’ve provided photos for books and magazines, had exhibitions and photography jobs and even began working for FAO and their Global Soil Partnership. And all thanks to springtails. It’s not an understatement to say that they have been life-changing. And even now, I have exactly the same excitement I used to have as a child watching nature in the garden. Apart from digging holes, I’ve genuinely not found anything that brings me as much joy as walking into a woodland or forest, not knowing what might be there, and sitting there with my loupe, a camera and a leaf or log, looking at soil animals.