1 more picture above in a note! :)

While I was looking around for the little pink flower I was planning to photograph, I noticed something dark fly down and try to land on...one of the pink flowers I was looking for!! Instead of landing on the little flower, which was small even to this beetle, it crashed into the flower and fell off the other side and into the grass.

With an amused grin, I creeped closer with hopes of taking pictures of it crawling up to the flower. Unfortunately, the beetle was several feet from the flower now, but its antics were great fun to watch! If a beetle could act annoyed, this one was doing a very convincing job! It was trying to fly but kept bumping into grass or stems and getting knocked down again. Then it would try crawling up a stem and fall off because of its fairly large and heavy size.

I could see a fun challenge awaiting me if the beetle could manage to crawl out of the jungle below and afford me a good vantage point for a picture. As you know, I am always practicing to take pictures of fast-moving insects or fleeting opportunities which require quick judgement, fast aiming and steady hands while aiming for that one chance for sharp focus. I watched with baited breath as he finally clambered up a very shaky stem of wild grass with the intentions of flying from the top. As it crawled over the tiny tines of the top of the grass, I got three pictures, and amazingly, I got focus on all of them!! Then he was in the air and off to crash into a flower somewhere else! :D

Of the three pictures I got, two of them were just a big shallow of dof for my liking and the angle wasn't optimal. But when I saw this picture I laughed out loud with a gleeful, "YES!!!" I couldn't have asked for a better outcome! Now, for those of you who are saying to yourself that you'll never get a picture like this, I'm saying the same thing!! So much of getting pictures like this has to do with luck and opportunity, but also lots of practice. Honestly, do what I do: practice every single time you have an chance to chase a bug around. You'll get better and better, and with time, you'll get much calmer and steady with the camera, and your results will improve. You have nothing to lose, and it's a fantastic game to play!! Come on!! SHOW ME YOUR PICTURES!!! :)