Overnight Lodger

I arrived home the other day and found this little visitor camped out by the door. I hadn't seen a praying mantis in some time, and perhaps had only seen a few in my lifetime. My understanding is that they are fairly common, but do an amazing job of blending in with their surroundings, staying quite still with a sculptural pose resembling a clump of sticks or leaves, and then striking their prey with lightning speed.

It was late afternoon when I saw him, or her, a time when activity winds down for the night. I grabbed my camera, that is, the Nikon P5100, and was allowed increasingly intimate opportunity to document the visit, under constant scrutiny by these highly visual creatures. At some point I must have been judged to not be a serious threat, because in the end, I had the camera quite close to its face. Only at times were the front pincers separated, a sign of some alarm. At no time did the wings spread, a red alert.

I wished that I had the Nikon D80, a single lens reflex camera I use at work. This would have allowed precision in the macro shots. It is quite hard to auto focus on a wispy creature, some two inches in length. It was necessary to auto focus on an object and then continually hold the focus and estimate the distance to the mantis, a hit or miss strategy for crisp focus on the subject. Another issue to be faced was the fact that the closer you are to the object you wish to focus on, the smaller the depth of field becomes, yielding an increasingly narrower focal range.

Through macro photography, I gained respect and admiration for this little predator of calm repose. That is one aggressive little grip at it's command.

It was time for the closeup. Okay, we got it!

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The mantis roamed a bit through the night, first to one side of the door, and then the other. I saw it nearby in the morning, but the photo opportunity was over. It was in no mood to cooperate as before, and I left it alone. Check out time was 11:00 AM, and it was gone. I only figured that it camouflaged itself in the bushes, laying low for the next meal.

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I felt fortunate to have been granted a view into this small world, steeped in some myth and mystery.