I couldn’t have set this photoshoot up even if I tried.  This stick insect had the audacity to land on my glasses one night last week.  It was gross, I was wearing the glasses at the time.

Given the amount of strimming I’d been doing I thought it must just have been a bit of grass dropping from my hair onto my specs so imagine my horror when I couldn’t get this green thing to brush off. My natural instinct was to throw my glasses to the ground and call for the fire brigade to water blast it off. 

But hang on I thought, I’m a photographer now, a perfect opportunity to get close up and personal with a stick insect.  So I carefully put my glasses on the heat exchange pump unit (glamorous I know), found my spare pair of specs and grabbed the camera.  And, in all that time I was dashing around this stick insect stayed rooted to my glasses.  And it stayed for quite a long time whilst I photographed it from every possible angle and twiddled with all the buttons to see what would happened.  Although not perfectly in focus, I like the result.

Which is more than I can say for stick insects.  And whilst you’re admiring another view of this bug just imagine what it would have been like to have this on your face!

In keeping with the bug theme, here’s a shot my father in law took with his camera of a bee busy in our front flower bed.  I love this picture for as it shows nature in simplicity.

Not to be outdone though, I sat on the veranda and took a zillion similar shots.  Here’s my favourite. Again, not all of it is perfectly in focus but I’m still working on composition and then I’ll get all the technicalities in line. Isn’t it interesting how you can get completely different colours from different cameras.  No photoshopping, honest!

I think I did rather better with a stationery butterfly.

But it’s best of all when you don’t have any bugs in the shot at all.  Only one thing to think about!

In my quest for some interesting bug shots I reckoned it was time to see if I could get a few snaps of dragon flies.  Do you know how hard it is to chase dragon flies and get them to sit still?  Here’s one that finally landed for a nano second.

And another.  This one didn’t pick the best background for a photo though.   I think it did it on purpose as I’d been chasing it up and down the lane for a while.  Does that make me a bug paparazzi?

And finally, another one landed close by and I love the way you can see through it’s wings.

Well that’s enough about bugs.  I’ve got another bug story to tell but that will have to wait for another day.  I really appreciated your critique of my photo practice before so don’t hold back, what could I do differently next time when photographing bugs?