Another Visitor To The Garden

I'm not much of an outdoors person.  My idea of a nice summer day is a comfy spot on the couch watching a movie with the air conditioning on High.  On the other hand, My Lovely Assistant put the 'out' in outdoors.  As a result, my sweaty head spends more time outside in the summer months than before.  In the overall scheme of things, I suppose that her pushing me out the door is a good thing since it would be pretty boring to see pictures of my floor every second day here on the blog.  Though truth be told, my floor is very pretty.  I'd also miss out on meeting all kinds of interesting creatures, such as this Grasshopper who passed by earlier this summer.  My Lovely Assistant was off planting some flowers when I first noticed Hoppy.  Yes, I like to name my little critter visitors.  He was sitting on the steps of my deck and I quickly made a move back inside to grab my camera.  I knew that I'd need the Macro lens in order to properly photograph my little friend, I only hoped that I'd be able to get close enough to Hoppy in order to use the lens and not scare him away.  Thanks to these many unplanned visits, I've gotten quite good at putting my camera together in a rather quick amount of time.  Even with my blazing speed, I feared that I had missed my visitor because when I got back outside, he was no longer where I had last seen him.  I quickly scanned the area, hoping to find the little guy, when I spotted him sitting on the pair of scissors that My Lovely Assistant had been using.  I didn't waste any time and began snapping away.  I continued snapping away for the better part of 30 minutes as I followed Hoppy around the deck.  Beginning on the scissors, back to the steps, into the flower pot and finally among the branches of parsley.  He was a very giving model, more than happy to stop and pose, and never once trying to get away or get spooked by either my movements or my moving of the plants where he was peacefully climbing.  The first photograph you see on this page was taken at f/4, 1/125sec, ISO 800 at 60mm.  I also cropped the photograph to 6" by 12" because I also liked the way that the scissors looked in the photo and wanted them to be featured as well.  By cropping the photo to that size rather than leaving it at 8" x 12", I feel I accomplished making the scissors stand out.  The second photograph was taken at f/4, 1/100sec, ISO 800 at 60mm.  Here are a couple more photos of Hoppy.

f/4, 1/30sec, ISO 400 at 60mm

f/4, 1/80sec, ISO 800 at 60mm

f/13, 1/200sec, ISO 1600 at 60mm

I had to play around a little bit to get that last shot.  I took the picture in Manual Mode, used my flash and had to experiment a little bit before I found the right combination.  Good thing Hoppy didn't get spooked by the flash because he must have been seeing stars by the time I was done.