Won't get fooled again

So Wednesday morning I'm racing out of my house to work, open up the front door and immediately I see a monstrous Walking Stick on the screen window of my storm door. AWESOME! We get tons of Praying Mantises around here, but this is the first time in my life I've ever seen a walking stick IRL and I cautiously open the door, rush to the truck and grab my 20D and the 28-75 and 60 Macro, silently praying that opening and closing the door won't have scared it off. Thankfully I get back to the front door and the little guy hasnt budged, he actually looks quite comfortable. So I start snapping away, making sure to get as many different angles as I can, full body etc and also MAKING SURE to get as close as possible to keeping the sharpness on its eyes.

I get to work and it's bugging (heh!) me all morning that I've got these shots to work over and finally at lunch I cant stand it any more, I go grab the lappy out of the car and download em into Lightroom and start looking. I can't use the lappy for critical work cause the color balance is off from my main workstation and I'm two kinds of color blind so I dont trust myself to eyeball em, but I can at least check sharpness and stuff and I'm pleased to see that there are at least two shots where I didn't quite NAIL sharpness on its eyeballs, but it's close enough for gubmint work.


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So I start showing off a few of the shots to some of my coworkers and they arent really interested, but one of em asks "So what are those two things sticking out at the far end?" To which I reply "Oh i thought those were legs" and then he says "Oh, they look like antennae to me!" And a sinking feeling hits me in the stomach.


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Uh, Dude? Those ARE antennae. You spent twenty minutes focussing on the things ASS END. Woops! Apparently those fake eyeballs are there near the pincers to scare off predators =p Faked me out big time! Won't get fooled again on that one, but its been 37 years in this town and thats the first I've seen one and I dunno if I will get that shot again =(

Anyway, looking through the shots there ARE a few that I did get a decent shot of its full body, eyes and antennae mostly in focus, but I'd have paid a LOT more attention to if if only I had known! A predator wouldnt get a second opportunity, here's to hoping that someday I do.


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Sam