Stick it to 'em!
Nets are effective at catching mosquitoes but removing them from the net and taking a photo is clumsy and slow. An aspirator makes it easier – it’s a tube used to suck the insect from the net into a small plastic sample jar. With some practice, the jar can be removed from the aspirator and capped without losing the insect.
Once the mosquito is in the jar, it's hard to get a clear photo since they won't sit still. You can freeze the jar to kill the mosquito. Usually that causes it to curl up, and it will typically lie on its side or back, making it hard to get a photo of the key ID features on the back.
Instead, get some transparent sticky sided plastic used to catch insect pests. (e.g. Black Flag 11018 Window Fly Trap). Cut a piece 3 cm x 4 - 6 cm and slip it inside the jar with the sticky face inwards and the long edge going around the inner circumference of the jar. Then, when you aspirate a mosquito into the jar it will quickly land on the sticky plastic. You can catch many insects at once before stopping to take photos so it saves a lot of time.
In fact, using this method, you don't need to bother with an aspirator. Just trap the mosquito in a small part of the net, and then take a plastic jar containing the sticky plastic, and slide it up inside the net until the opening is in the small part of the net where the mosquito is. With a little nudging it will fly inside. In a few moments it will stick to the sticky and you can take it out and cap the jar. You can catch several like this - you can take the cap off and they won't escape.
Most insects stick in an upright position as if they had carefully landed and are perfectly positioned for a photograph. You don’t need to kill them – just take out the plastic, lay it on a gray surface, and take photos. It makes it easy to do in the field. This works so well that I was able to use my phone to photograph five mosquitoes at once, without using a macro lens, and identify them all from that one photo. See: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4083377.
Van
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Kill 'em. Nasty little biters and disease vectors. Besides if they are stuck to a plastic strip won't they die anyway? I get bit every time I leave the house especially after 4:30 PM.
They take as long as a couple of days to die. If you are getting bit, try and catch a few! We could use some observations from your area. The trick to getting a good photo ID is to get a picture of its back - you may have to hold it with fingers or a tweezers since dead ones lay on their side or back. Then zoom in with your phone. Also put it on a dark or gray background, not white, so the exposure is better. Have plenty of light. Good hunting!
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