1107_1870 Grasshopper
One of my final shots; the air had gone from totally calm to a light breeze, and big rain drops were starting to splatter down. As if they knew what was coming - and in a way, they must have - the insects in my alfalfa patch just wanted to hunker down and wait out the storm. I know that it is fanciful to refer to an insect "wanting" anything... but who can resist anthropomorphizing when confronted by a face like this?
Tech info: I prefer natural light to flash when shooting insects, but that sometimes entails the use of slow shutter speeds. In this case, with the macro focused as close as it would go, ISO set at 400 to keep the digital noise low, I had to stop down the aperture because of the very shallow depth of field. This was only possible because my subject was less active than some of the other critters I photographed that morning. It hid behind an alfalfa stem and watched me. With an aperture of f/25 and shutter speed at 1/5 second, even in relative stillness many shots are going to be unsharp. Therefore I fired a long burst on "continuous" (formerly called motor drive), and out of a dozen frames I managed one or two where my subject was still and the slight tremble from the wind nonexistent.
Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.
© James R. Page - all rights reserved.
1107_1870 Grasshopper
One of my final shots; the air had gone from totally calm to a light breeze, and big rain drops were starting to splatter down. As if they knew what was coming - and in a way, they must have - the insects in my alfalfa patch just wanted to hunker down and wait out the storm. I know that it is fanciful to refer to an insect "wanting" anything... but who can resist anthropomorphizing when confronted by a face like this?
Tech info: I prefer natural light to flash when shooting insects, but that sometimes entails the use of slow shutter speeds. In this case, with the macro focused as close as it would go, ISO set at 400 to keep the digital noise low, I had to stop down the aperture because of the very shallow depth of field. This was only possible because my subject was less active than some of the other critters I photographed that morning. It hid behind an alfalfa stem and watched me. With an aperture of f/25 and shutter speed at 1/5 second, even in relative stillness many shots are going to be unsharp. Therefore I fired a long burst on "continuous" (formerly called motor drive), and out of a dozen frames I managed one or two where my subject was still and the slight tremble from the wind nonexistent.
Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.
© James R. Page - all rights reserved.