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Warren Spreng
08-09-2015, 04:41 PM
So many things went wrong with this photo session but thought I would post it anyway! I found a Cicada nymph/larva crawling on the sidewalk so I moved him to a nice location on one of my trees where the light was good, I could photograph him easily, etc, etc, etc. So what did he do? He crawled for another half hour until he got in a position that I had to do yoga moves to even get the camera close, I cut 5 small branches off my tree so I could get the camera in and then I didn't have my flash to do some fill in. But what fun watching the adult emerge over the next hour! So many shots but I think this is one of the better ones so I didn't have a house as the background. I have seen time lapses of these and laugh at how shaky they are and then while watching saw why they are shaky. The thing shakes like crazy coming out! Love this hobby!!
Canon T3i, HH, MF, f/14, 1/125, ISO 800, Canon 60 mm Macro. I raised shadows and decreased the brightness of the BG in LR, then rotated, did a high pass to sharpen the cicada and rotated it 90 degrees as I did not like the orientation, I figured this could pass as a horizontal branch! What amazed me was how fast the wings go from that crumpled state to full fledged wings!

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Ron Conlon
08-10-2015, 07:02 PM
One way to get some pruning in ;)
Love the biology here.

Warren Spreng
08-10-2015, 08:10 PM
One way to get some pruning in ;)
Love the biology here.

Luckily didn't have to take any major limbs off!

Diane Miller
08-10-2015, 08:25 PM
Wonderful! Amazing how they pull this off. You did good!

Nancy Bell
08-11-2015, 09:31 AM
Amazing experience and the image tells a story! I totally understand the thinking that you could arrange this to your liking, and then the cicada has it's own agenda! Check out my earlier cicada image that didn't quite turn out how I wanted.

Warren Spreng
08-11-2015, 08:12 PM
Wonderful! Amazing how they pull this off. You did good!

Thanks Diane!

Warren Spreng
08-11-2015, 08:16 PM
Amazing experience and the image tells a story! I totally understand the thinking that you could arrange this to your liking, and then the cicada has it's own agenda! Check out my earlier cicada image that didn't quite turn out how I wanted.

Thanks Nancy, yes I remember your shot, I thought about that when I was capturing this one!