The dude with no wings and no thirst!

I'm relatively lazy macro photographer. It means that pretty much all macro photography is done in my backyard or near the house. But who could blame me if there is so much going on here. It is a zoo out here I tell ya, a zoo! If I'm done with my backyard, then I shall explore the world.

As I have mentioned before, I'm a big fan of butterflies but unfortunately the best time to photograph them is very early at the morning, about 5 or 7 o'clock when they are very-very sleepy but then, so am I. At day time they are very alert and that makes them a difficult subject to photograph. But not impossible! If I only had the patience :)

Today, very early at the morning I discovered this caterpillar crawling in the bush. Although with him speed was no problem, coz he didn't have his wings yet and he was the slowest dude in the garden, I found him hard to photograph. I was struggling with the light and the strong wind was no help.

After an hour and a half of crawling around the bush and cursing like a motherfucker, with no decent photo ... I had enough! I went back in the house, got my flashgun and took the shot (actually about thirty of forty with plenty of angles but this I liked the most). I would have preferred natural softer light with some shadows, but as the sun was way up and the morning dew on his back was almost vaporised I used my flashgun instead.

The dude in the picture is Tent caterpillar who are moderately sized species in the genus (Malacosoma) in the moth family Lasiocampidae.

Check the bigger version of the picture here , the details on him is something else :)

Wikipedia link here!