Macro HeadShot Series 1: Mantis
Wow! I spotted this lovely lady waiting for dinner in a row of Cosmos blossoms. She was a little bit annoyed but I was able to persuade her to allow a few photos.
As implied by the title of this post; this is the start of a new series I will be publishing of macro headshots!
Remember to hit follow to get the next in the series straight in your feed!
The first image is a tighter crop of this image, it makes for a better thumbnail and modern digital cameras capture enough detail to make cropping so close possible!
As always click any picture to see this creature really close!**
Bonus tip: on Steem, right click--> open image in new window often opens the image at the original uploaded image size!
I was particularly pleased with the details on the mouth and spikes on the forelimb, both are literally eye catching as Mantids often eat their prey head first. Having no poison to rely on, this ensures a peaceful meal time.
Calmly standing on my hand as I try to get the back ground looking good. If you wave your fingers like a bug, the mantis will turn towards your hand! Then you need to be fast to get the camera back in position to take the shot before something else catches your subjects attention.
After the shoot, I carefully placed the mantis back on the cosmos stalk it was originally perched upon.
The same species but with a slightly different colouration.
The black dot is not a true pupil as you would see on a vertebrate eye, it is rather an optical illusion formed by those lens of the compound eye, being aligned with the camera and reflecting no light, that is the part of the eye that is looking directly at you!
Resteem to share with your own followers!
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Great focus and awesome colors!!
Yes, I was very very pleased to find it amongst the cosmos flowers! Thanks @cheeto.blue!
So nice @mweich!!
Thank you very much @pavelfyr!
Wow. . Very good shoot. . @mweich . . I like it. .
Thanks @nazarwills! I hope you stick around for the rest of the series too!
@mweich The titles of your topics sound really good, inspiring and helpful for newbies:))
Upvoted and resteemed!
@steemit.global motive is encouraged to steemers from {Resteemed and Upvote}.
Thanks for the great support @steemit.global I hope people can learn a bit from the tips I sometimes put in the posts.
Great shots , I really like the first and second one. Didn't it try and bite you?
No, if you handle them respectfully they don't try to bite or pinch you with its arms at all.
The way to pick one up is to put your hand in front of it and with your other hand gently push it forward and it just climbs right on! To put it back on the branch, bring the mantis to the branch and gently push it off your hand, it'll just walk back onto the plant.
Do be careful to keep your hand higher than your arm, they like to climb UP and it may end up on your head.
Do not grab it from behind! Though it won't be able to attack you, it's the same motion a predator would use to grab and eat the mantis, it'll either fly away or twist around and stab you with its arms and while struggling it may injure itself.
Very Cool thanks for the reply , I have always been scared to pick one up. Maybe next time I will face my fear and just go for it :)
Give it the choice to crawl onto you and it will feel much less stressed and usually be quite docile. Works for stick insects too!
very clear its mantis image. great post. I like it very much.
Thank you very much @rizakuma!
You are welcome :-)
It looks like me in that picture :) Just kidding) So these are some wonderful photographs by an amazing photographer...
Maybe....haha. Thank you for the wonderful compliment @tanata!
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