Look! And Thou Shall Find!

At times I get this sense that life is constantly conspiring to give a photographer a hard time …. I mean it is not uncommon for us to find ourselves in a situation where everything falls into place - just perfect!! - but nothing works, regardless 😠

Yesterday was one such day for me. I decided to arrive my usual haunt earlier than usual – at 5.30AM. I am aware that that is an unGodly hour to attempt to do any photography – I mean lighting would be so poor. But my pursuit was not photography as such – I wanted to see if some uncommon moths can be sighted in the wee hours. My thinking was that maybe I can see them before the resident birds consume them for breakfast.

And I was right! I did see a beautiful lifer (in bird photography, a lifer is when a photographer sees a new bird for the first time) – lodged inside a dim crevice. It was nothing short of Bo Derek in her sublimal prime! Alas! as excited as I was, there was no way I was going to be able to photograph it. So, I gingerly went about trying to coax it out of the crevice so that I have it in full view. It was game – it did crawl out of the dank hole and presented itself in its entirity. What a moth!! Sadly, the light was so dim …. I could barely see its outline.

So, given that there is nothing else to do, I sat down in front of the moth – and, like a vigilant sentinel, I kept watch over it.  …. and waited, and waited and waited ---- for the morning light to improve. Finally, by around 6.20AM – after about 50 minutes of patiently keeping watch over it - the light was good enough …. so I began shooting the beautiful, uncommonly shaped and bi-colored moth. Thank God!! the moth was completely pliable – I first shot its Left Profile:

… Then I gently twirled it around so I could shoot its Right Profile:

 … Then I shot its Back/Top Profile so that I have its full wing pattern:

… and finally I went down on my belly and shot its Snout as well - the Frontal Profile!! It was pretty crazy … I mean no one shoots a moth’s snout – in fact I did not know that it had a snout – but it turns out that it actually does – the following will prove it .... and what a SNOUT!:

By the way, the moth is called Green Fruit-piercing Moth (Eudocima salaminia), a moth belonging to Erebidae within the superfamily Noctuoidea.

ENJOY!!!