About my passion.

Macro photography is my passion, a passion that I have been constantly developing for over a dozen years. I put my whole heart and a lot of time into it.

Since 2018, I have been photographing mostly ants. These insects captivated me with their diversity, richness of colors and various behaviors. Earlier (like most people) I distinguished only black, red and wood ants, even though I was well aware that there are a lot of species both in the world and even just in Poland. By now, my knowledge about ants is more extensive and I don't have problems with distinguishing ants anymore :) I try to disseminate this knowledge in many ways. This year I visited several classrooms at my children's school to show everyone the diversity of the ant world - of course, I did this for free.

Why me ?

I am a person with limited mobility, after three spinal surgeries, and I am currently on sickness benefit (about 240 euros per month) and my possibilities for financing my passion are very limited. Together with my wife and two children, we live on my wife's salary (around 650 euros a month)

For what ?

First of all, I want to use the money from this fundraiser to cover the current expenses related to my website (hosting and domain are currently about 120 euros per year) and the acquisition of new specimens for photos. The more interesting and rare the ants, the lower the willingness of anyone wanting to send them - no wonder, after all, scientists often look for a specific species for years and still manage to find only a few specimens. However, sometimes I do manage to obtain such extremely rare species, for instance, Thaumatomyrmex mannii, of which there are only about 10 specimens in collections around the world. I am currently trying to obtain an even rarer specimen to show its uniqueness. I don't want to reveal what it is yet, not to jinx it, but if I succeed, it will be a huge success for me. My photo gallery is already quite large (the largest in the world), but still I do not rest on my laurels and try to get new interesting ants from around the world to show their beauty to everyone.