Around 1920, after serving in World War I, Edward Steichen experimented with his camera in his garden in Voulangis. Among the thousands of photographs he produced in those years – most of which did not survive – were several close-ups of grasshoppers and butterflies. It looks like Steichen took a grasshopper to his studio and put it on a stalk there. But instead, Steichen took his own backdrop outside when he was photographing in the garden and in the fields, prepared to quickly take pictures if an opportunity presented itself. Thus, Steichen was able to capture ephemeral moments and make them seem like carefully composed pictures.