This sounds a great project, I wish you every success. Hopefully your students will learn to love and respect insects and not to have any irrational fears of them.
A few tips from me (nothing technical):
- If you need to, practice using your phone to take macro shots using a small object on a table top. Practice holding the phone and pressing the shutter button/screen with one hand so that you can leave your other hand free whilst doing it.
- Think about where the insects might settle. If there are some flowers these may encourage insects as well as providing a nice backdrop.
- Insects such as ants may be attracted to a solution of sugar water. It’s probably best not to put honey down for insects. Wasps in particular will be attracted to this, but it risks passing on potential nasties (viral/bacterial infections).
- It may be possible to attract certain insects after dark using a UV Torch.
- A little plastic pot, like a yoghurt pot or similar, may be useful to temporarily hold an insect whilst photographing it.
- Wait for your subject to settle. The chances of getting a decent moving image are minimal.
- Approach your subject slowly and quietly. Don’t just lunge your phone in the direction of an insect and expect it to stay put. Some may, many won’t.
- Take an ‘insurance shot’ from a distance so that you know you’ve got a picture, then get closer. Use this method to get successively closer images.
- Think about where the light is coming from and avoid making shadows. Often these can be enough to scare an insect off - especially when they need to sun themselves to warm up. Even if they don’t, the shadows usually make for worse pictures.
- Remember that one of the toughest things about macro photography is that there’s a very shallow depth-of-focus. For this reason, you need to think very carefully about which part of the subject you want in sharpest focus. In the vast majority of animal photography it is the face, and the eye in particular, that we want to see the clearest. However there may sometimes be occasions when photographing insects when we want to focus on something else, maybe the wing of a butterfly or the carapace of a beetle.
- Please treat all insects with respect and with kindness. They are beautiful creatures and have their own lives to live.