Macro photos with insects in our garden

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My wife called me and she said that there are a lots of baby grasshopper occupying the leaves of her eggplant in our garden, I told her that those grasshoppers looks cute but you are not aware that they ate the leaves of your plant, I think its a sign that the eggplant is growing in its top shape. She went to closely to the insects and took some photos using her Nokia phone, she posted it in her blog - http://www.mommylace.com/2012/04/14/summer-garden/

When I saw the photos, I got curious and grabbed my Olympus E520 dslr camera and then I removed my UV filter and mounted that macro filter and converter infront of my 14-42 Zuiko lens, last time I used a DIY styro in my pop up flash to help diffuse and illuminate light on a macro object, but this time I used my Ring flash add on to my CDR King flash gun (normally a rebranded Godox TT520 Speedlite flash ) and I went to our garden and started shooting.

I forgot to set a correct ISO for this and I took a quick shoot of the insects and then I started to complain the mosquitoes around me and decided not to stay outdoors in a hot 11:30am. The grasshoppers are so small and its hard for me to position my camera with a heavy O ring flash add on and on my first trial shoot, the O ring and my flash fell off to the ground, I got worried that my camera hotshoe might be damage, so my 2nd trial is to hold the O ring to support the heavy weight of the flash if I'm going to shoot downward. After some successful attempt, I shoot smoothly...and almost lay myself on the dirt.

1st photo is above, its my favorite shot, but after the grasshopper, I got an interest to shoot that tiny spider who grabbed its lunch.

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Shooting from above

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I shot this using my camera's live view because the leaves blocks my path and I don't want to disturb the insects

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spotted this one munching his lunch

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I love this spider, but I got scared because of its pointy feet

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Someone is having their lunch.... tiny spider caught a small beetle

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Posing for one last shot

Its summer here in Cavite and I think this is the best season to do macro photography here in our garden, my only problem is that the heat and the harmful rays of the sun, maybe a shady afternoon around 5pm is a good schedule to do marco photography, I'll do another shoot and see how's our insect kingdom is doing under the hot summer.

Gear:
Olympus E520 dslr camera
zuiko lens 14-42mm
CDR King flash gun
O ring flash