July 18, 2005

Mantis.

This is a praying mantis that stayed still long enough for me to get a group of close-up shots of it, on my balcony/deck, Sunday morning. It's so humid in Southern Illinois these days that my lens fogged up like my glasses do when I went outside. But that big ole' bug stood there and waited. It even turned around to face me and to strike a pose for several shots. I like this black and white one, but in the color ones, you can see the color of the mantis: tan. I've never seen one that was not green, and this one had white eyes. (I should look this up.) I like to think that the mantis is praying to its mantis god that I pass my prelims in four weeks.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool. I've never seen one of those in "real life" myself. Nice photo.

Anonymous said...

I am a regular reader that would prefer to stay anonymous. I just wanted to tell you that this picture is AMAZING! It is not very often that I find blogger pictures that strike me the way this one did. This photo could be start of a thousand great stories.

Great Catch!

Pragmatik said...

Thanks very much Nancy and Anon. for the kind words. I really appreciate it:)

Mo said...

nice pic.

not sure about you switching sides though...

lucidity said...

I love black and white, and overall "washed out" photographs. They add so much more depth. In my opinion anyways.

That sucker is huge, then again, is the wood its staying on too small? Perception is a bitch.

Pragmatik said...

He's about five inches long, I think. I was afraid that if I got any closer, he'd take a finger, lol.

Sal said...

Found it! Here ya go:

Mantis Fu