Twinkies(orchid mantis and ladybugs)

A 3 day old Orchid Mantis investigates a pair of ladybugs.

Great sympathetic colors and an excellent macro.  I can hear the mantis telling them to break it up, there's a camera present ;-)...  Mike

Is this a single image? Pretty stunning if so

Stunning colors, detail and action.

Thanks everyone.   Steve - Yes, it is a single image...sorta.   I did just a little bit of stacking to increase the dof, but this is what I saw.  I wish I would have shot it at about f25 instead of f16, then maybe I wouldn't have had to do any stacking.

Nice trio, maybe not in the best momment for the couple...

like♥♥♥ regards,Pekka :)

well seen and done . Nice colors ( RGB !) and composition. Very good

congrats

vezio

wow! Great details! Rich colours and an action as if it was staged! Very good! Tamara

I'd say no biggie on the stacking. Was it in nature or a controlled setting, and where they placed at all? Just curious, not casting aspersion.

Thanks all.

Steve, I shot this on my kitchen table.  That's probably the type of answer you were after, but here's the longer version.  I have a portable macro setup that I made that I move around and shoot in different locations of the house.:)  Just a roughly 15"X15" board with about the same size of a backboard attached.   I taped a picture of the sky to the back for this picture.   I put a 3 1/2 " long screw a half an inch into a small block of wood and taped this plant leaf stem, which I cut off the plant next to the kitchen table, along side the screw so that it was sticking straight up past the screw a few inches.   My original plan was to just shoot a single lady bug and this like colored mantis together.   This Orchid mantis only lives in Asian rainforests in the wild, by the way.  These lady bugs were the most active I have ever seen.   Every time I placed one on the stem they would either fly off or just constantly run very quickly down it and I would have to have a skewer for them to walk on by the time they reached the bottom, but they were going so quickly, they usually ended up across the table.   I noticed a couple mating in the container of them I had caught earlier that day.   I had the couple crawl on the skewer and then they crawled together down the stem over and over until they separated.  Granted, they moved at a much slower pace than the singles, but it still wasn't going to work for a photo.  The idea did occur to me to just take a pic of them crawling down and then take a pic of the mantis and combine them, and honestly I was just about to do that.  But now I was left with no mating ladybugs, so I went to the field about a half a mile from my house and collected about a dozen more.  By the time I arrived back home, these two were hitting it hot and heavy.   I placed them on the stem and they were doing the same thing.....crawl down to my skewer, crawl to the other end of my skewer, and back off to the top of the stem.  I took several pics using my remote cable release.....had my camera on my tripod concentrating on about an inch and a half section of stem.   I was sure I would have to do a composite if I wanted the picture.  Then all of a sudden they just stopped, right in the area I had my camera focused on.  I whispered to myself, "Holy shit".  They weren't in the right plane for the shot, so I carefully turned the block of wood so that they were, and put the skewer in front of the mantis.   He walked right on and right off and right over the top of them.  I had him do that about 3 times before ending it.  This turned out a lot better than what I was originally going for with a single ladybug and it also turned out a lot better with him crawling over them and touching them, which wouldn't have happened or even occurred to me if I had to end up doing a composite.

Good background info. I'll take a setup over a composite any day. Still not at all an easy shot to pull off, and you've done it well. Even NatGeo has been known to do some outrageous setups for their nature work. Not my style, but I can respect it when it's done well and it doesn't hurt the creatures. I do think the meaning and significance for nature work changes when it's in the wild, but setups are not uncommon. I won't name names, but a couple of the most famous humming bird photogs in the world have gotten many of their shots in their screened-in porch.

Believe it or not, this being a nature shot just didn't even ever occur to me.  That doesn't make much sense, I know.   I guess maybe because my whole mantis folder is pretty much nothing but obviously staged shots and this mantis only lives in Asia, and I'm obviously not from there.  I agree completely that nature shots in the total wild mean a whole lot more than staged or even pictures taken on a wildlife ranch.  I don't know of any famous hummingbird photographers, but if they are famous for shooting hummingbirds, that is a little disappointing hearing they shoot them in a screened porch.  My hummingbird folder is pretty much full of nothing but pics I took while sitting at the same table that I sat at while shooting this.   Different house now and unfortunately no more hummers.  I had the setup just outside the window and shot through the closed window for all of them.  A few of them were obviously staged too with the GI Joe, Barbie, and St. Francis, but the birds were wild and not screened in. 

Fantastic shot! Vibrant color and well defined details. Thank you for sharing. Btw, at the risk of sounding like a complete moron... what exactly is "stacking"? :)

Thanks Trish.  Stacking is combining photos(almost always macro) that are basically the same photo taken but with different points of focus and combining them in Photoshop so you end up with a greater dof.  Some people shoot dead insects and put the camera on a rail and shoot hundreds of pictures and combine them all with software designed just for stacking, and end up with a highly magnified and detailed insect with everything in focus.  For this shot, I was using a tripod, but the insects were moving, so I couldn't stack much.   I actually didn't do any stacking to the mantis.   I thought about maybe adding a right antenna that was more in focus, but obviously didn't.   The front side of the stem and the front ladybug's legs and part of her face were out of focus and I didn't think it looked good, so I added that part from a couple of pictures taken within a few seconds of the original.

Mantises eat other bugs! It looks like he's sizing them over, trying to figure out where to bite first. Was that not a concern of yours when setting this up?

Adam - He was running over the top of them.  I would be willing to bet about anything that not a single L1 Orchid Mantis has ever eaten a ladybug.  They only eat small fruit flies at this stage. 

Outstanding!!! Freaking great!

Wow wow wow what a great photography ,  Its a real and professional ... i start learning that type on photography . now i am working on Celebrity pics and videos . Thanks

Excellent colour and details, great image.