Learning to See: The World of Insects

I found this documentary on DVD at my public library. Picture and sound are excellent and the disc has several interesting "extras" including a slide show of perhaps 140 to 150 different exotic insects, many never documented before. On a large screen HDTV they look marvelous.

Robert Oelman was born and raised in the Midwest and became a therapist. He worked in that capacity for 20+ years until he decided he wanted out of that rat race, picked up and moved to Colombia. Apparently without a definite plan.

Oelman took an interest in the small world, particularly insects, many of them so small you'd never see them without a rigorous search. He bought a somewhat dilapidated homestead and hired a man and his family to live there and keep the place in order. Eventually the husband, Christian Lopez, became his photography assistant.

Oelman had to expand his knowledge and equipment for doing what is generally called macro photography, special lenses and flash for photographing things as small as a few millimeters. After he exhausted the subjects near his homestead he began to take trips to other South America locations.

The bottom line of all this is he has discovered and photographed perhaps hundreds, or maybe thousands, of previously undiscovered insects. He has added a wealth of knowledge to the subject. The documentary also includes many short comments from scholars who have benefitted from Oelman's exploits.

This is a very good documentary, it of course has some content regarding human industrial recklessness which destroys habitats and thus many species becoming extinct.

After reading the other reviews I came to the conclusion that I must be the only one that wasn't that impressed by this documentary. I thought I was going to learn a lot of new things about insects and that documented by beautiful images. There is no doubt Robert Oelman is a brilliant photographer though. Very nice picture of to us unknown insects, he clearly knows how to use his macro-lens camera. For that it was worth watching, but I didn't like the story about why and how he became a photographer and so on, that's just not interesting material for people that want to learn more about insects. And that kind of footage is overly present in this documentary. It became more a documentary about Robert Oelman than about insects. A better title would have been Learning about macro-photography: The World Of Robert Oelman. Well that's only my opinion, and even if I still enjoyed the insect pictures, I just wished they only did that, with a nice narrating voice of David Attenborough for example, instead of explaining us how much money Robert Oelman paid for his finca and other futile uninteresting things like that. I would buy a book with his photos though, and probably enjoy it much more than this documentary.

This documentary didn't blow my mind with some twisted tale. It did , however, nourish my soul. It felt so good to watch something that felt good for me. The pacing, the story, the bonds, the .... well it was done well, with care and it shows. It was the best kind of break from shows and movies and I love ants so while it wasn't about insects in the way I anticipated it was about a man learning to see the world and it opened up my eyes to take a look at the world all around me. I watched this yesterday and usually try to wait to see how a show sits with me before reviewing. I say 10 but by my own standards thaT would mean most anyone could sit down be riveted , but I would recommend this for family movie night - it has just enough of everything and so much if what I wasn't expecting

A wonderful journey of a man who wanted to change his life to then find himself on a beautiful journey of discovery for both Robert as well as all of mankind as he discovers the wonderful world of insects as well as himself. As we follow Robert and his son and filmmaker Jake Oleman... we discover as much about themselves as they do the little known world of insects. Amazing cinematography/photography and story telling...

'Learning to See' gives so many more reasons to love and preserve rain forests worldwide, as if we needed another. Visually stunning, emotionally compelling, and continuously thought-provoking, the film will surprise even avid followers of rain forest fauna. Hopefully, this will be one piece from which a critical mass of earthlings will be learning to see.