Up In My Grill

Copyright ©2009 Adam Saynuk. All rights reserved. This image may not be duplicated, downloaded, reproduced, altered, or printed without permission.

This guy was a very patient insect, I believe he was a cicada.

I took photos of him from several angles, and like this one a lot. He seems to be staring at us, like the face of a parked truck. He was hanging out on a chain link fence in the middle of summer. The gold flecky stuff on the cicada's "face" is actually tiny little hairs, or something like it. They catch the sunlight in a beautiful gold twinkle.

Shooting things this small is difficult because the depth of field at this level of magnification is very shallow. As you can see in this photo, I only get about a half to a full centimeter of usable focus. This is partially due to my lens setup (a Sigma 18-125 with a Raynox 2.5x macro ring adapter and filter on the front), and partially just the nature of macro photography. Generally speaking, the more light you can get on your subject, the greater amount of depth of field you can gain. But there are limits to everything.

I think I shot this photo with no added flash, so that accounts for part of my problem with the low depth of field.

Send me your suggestions for something tiny that you'd like to see big.

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