Collaborators send Niga specimens of ants and other insects, or he orders them online. Some arrive alive; they’re returned to the sender after the photo shoot or live out their days in colonies Niga keeps. Other specimens arrive preserved, often in ethanol. To ready a dead specimen for its close- up, Niga carefully rehydrates it, cleans it, pries open its jaws, and pins it in a lifelike position. ("It’s a little world," he says, "so every little thing matters.") He then takes hundreds of magnified images of the insect’s parts. To make the final portrait, Niga combines 150 to 500 of the images using a process called focus stacking, in which similar images with different focal points are blended to achieve a more profound depth of field. Completing one of these portraits can require a week or longer.