Amateur photos taken with love

[gynnyr]

Hello hello! I'm kind of new around these parts but I figured I'd share what I have with you folks! I'm really excited about my new arrivals, so I snapped dozens of photos and want to share them with you guys.

As my title suggests, I'm not exactly set up to do macro photography, and the better camera I have is currently having a tantrum in a box somewhere and refusing to turn on. So you'll have to bear with me on counts of clarity, overexposure and grainyness.

But without further ado... my collection!

A repost from my intro thread of my first s. carolina Minnerva

My new girl Athena, who likes to sit still for photos more than her counterpart

She thankfully doesn't like to LEAP like Minnie does

She also seems to like being up in the light, whereas Minnie likes to run back down my arm

Profile shot, she's a beauty

 

[gynnyr]

The girls together, which was a cool first experience

As I said before, Minnie is the mover and shaker, Athena is content to just stay put

While Athena is a nice bright green, I have to give it to Minnerva for her brindle patterned brown

Once the girls were put away, there was of course the matter of the babies I received from lemmiwinks yesterday (big thanks, they're very lively and are eating well!)

First up, the t. sinensis, who wasn't prone to running about on my hand like the others. He just wanted to sit and clean and be adorable. Unfortunately due to his similarity in colour to my skin... most of the photos were too blurry to bother posting. But here's the few I thought were good enough!

The only 'normal' picture that came out half decent

I love this little one's silhouette!

And then he started cleaning himself, which was adorable

 

[tier]

As my title suggests, I'm not exactly set up to do macro photography, and the better camera I have is currently having a tantrum in a box somewhere and refusing to turn on. So you'll have to bear with me on counts of clarity, overexposure and grainyness.

Hi

Welcome. The quality of the pictures is good. But I would recommend you to work on the background of your pictures. The mantids are fine, but your backgrounds make your pictures to be not really good in my opinion. A easy cheat I do is: Take a black towel or t-shirt and hang it over a chair.

There you have a nice background. I think black, white, brown, orange and green towels or t-shirts work very good. Or you can experiment with shirts with flower-patterns, like i did here:

http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/1ff4-53-jpg.html

I think a background is easy to create and would make your pictures much better. I hope you do not get me wrong, I just want to help. I am not good at taking pictures myself.

regards

 

[gynnyr]

And last but not least (except maybe size), the m. paykullii nymphs! These guys are so tiny and so QUICK! I snapped dozens of just one to get a couple of decent ones.

I opened one of the containers to find one of my nymphs eating his brother. Disheartening, to be sure, but these things happen sometimes. I snapped a quick picture, in either case.

Preliminary picture I took for my fiancée to show just how tiny they are!

Roaming about on the back of my hand

You can see a bit more of his banding on this, they're all very stripey!

He had trouble getting over my arm hair, hahaha

I love these little silhouettes, they're so tiny and cute

HE SAW ME

 

[gynnyr]

HiWelcome. The quality of the pictures is good. But I would recommend you to work on the background of your pictures. The mantids are fine, but your backgrounds make your pictures to be not really good in my opinion. A easy cheat I do is: Take a black towel or t-shirt and hang it over a chair.

There you have a nice background. I think black, white, brown, orange and green towels or t-shirts work very good. Or you can experiment with shirts with flower-patterns, like i did here:

http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/1ff4-53-jpg.html

I think a background is easy to create and would make your pictures much better. I hope you do not get me wrong, I just want to help. I am not good at taking pictures myself.

regards

Ah, thanks for the tip! I really wasn't thinking about the background too much in these shots, and I think it shows. I'm unfortunately in a basement room here and only have one light to try and take pictures by, so I was more concerned with whether or not things were well-lit and not the backgrounds themselves. I see now that perhaps they are really distracting. I'll see what I can do next time about lighting and backgrounds. Thank you though!

 

[Rick]

Very nice. I'd be careful taking those tiny nymphs out. They are easy to lose!

 

[Katnapper]

I enjoyed the pics.

 

[revmdn]

Cool beans.

 

[gynnyr]

Some more miscellaneous photos and a video this time!

Minerva laid another ooth this morning, which I caught partially on film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBlM8anv3Sw

She apparently was going to put it a little lower on the branch, but there was a fake cattail too closeby it seems and she opted against it

My paykullii nymphs have almost all molted to L3 now (one straggler left behind!) and had to be moved to a bigger container to keep from crowding the little one. Here are two of the L3's, the L2 and the empty molts all clustered together as I went to move them over.

In contrast, only one of my t. sinensis have decided to molt. Here he is with his roommate, who is still L2.

And here he is solo. He ran onto of my hand as I went to open the cup for feeding and startled me. I totally thought the empty skin was him hanging on the underside of the branch!

That's all for now. Hope these are a little better than the last ones!

 

[sbugir]

I watched the video, the music fit the video so well. Truly a masterpiece

 

[ismart]

Great pic's! Keep em coming!