Backyard Nature Photography

I took this photo of a praying mantis, Tenodera Sinensis, yesterday afternoon in front of my garage. It wasn't moving much when I saw it so I ran into the house to grab my camera and 70-300mm 1:2 macro lens. I wanted to get a eye-level view so I laid down on the hot asphalt and took a number of pictures. It's difficult to handhold a 300mm macro lens while getting the eyes in focus so the majority of those pictures I had to delete afterwards. Frustrated with my results, I decided to try my 17-35mm lens at f11 about six inches away from the praying mantis. It wasn't quite what I was hoping to get as I wanted to fill up the frame with the insect but it does convey a sense of wildlife displacement due to suburban development. (An all-too-familiar sight in Southern California I might add.)



Finally I decided to put it all on the line and got out my 60mm macro lens set at f9.0. 60mm isn't long enough in most cases to get close enough to creatures without spooking them, but since it didn't mind my presence I put my camera within two or three inches of the praying mantis and fired away blindly in hopes of capturing a dynamic portrait. Since I'm insectophobic, I was in no mood to put my face within three inches of the insect. Luckily for me it didn't move forward while I was taking pictures.



Several other macro photos were taken of the praying mantis eating, and looking upwards at me while I was shooting down at it. Apparently even insects have some sort of intelligence!