Garden Intruder
Aug 26th, 2007 by John Setzler
I went out to my garden this afternoon to water my cayenne pepper plants and, by accident, noticed this stealthy intruder having his way with my crop. I didn’t notice him immediately, but when he moved, I was a bit stunned. I finished watering the plant and went inside to get my camera. I knew he wasn’t going far. I got my 50mm lens and my 12mm extension tube, along with my 20×30 piece of black foamcore board that I use for tabletop studio backgrounds and went back outside. We had a mild breeze this afternoon, so getting this photo wasn’t easy. I set the camera at f/22 and ISO 200 so I could have enough depth of field to get the entire image sharp, and my resulting shutter speeds on this set were 1/40″. I made about 20 images and only two of them were acceptably sharp. I didn’t take the tripod out like I would normally recommend, because I just didn’t have the time to do it properly today before I went to work. If you have ever tried to setup a tripod for a natural environment macro photo, you know how much time and patience that takes. The light in this photo is natural sunlight. I shot this photo in RAW format and modified the white balance slightly to give it a slightly warmer cast.
After some research, I have learned that this creature is called a Tobacco Hornworm. This particular member must fancy spicy food :)