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Hello #Hive photography lovers!... I have to say that September has started off very well as far as photos to take are concerned. Just this morning, coming back from exercising in a nearby park, I spotted this huge grasshopper perched on one of the white walls in front of my house... Wow... "That's like watching a bunch of pictures falling out of the sky miraculously", I thought... 😂

^{📷 01 - 100 mm | 1/5000s | f/7.1 | ISO 640}

^{📷 02 - 100 mm | 1/1600s | f/6.3 | ISO 640}

So I immediately went into my house and ran to my room to get my camera, attached my 100 mm macro lens to it and went out humming happily back to the street. But not before noticing the look on my wife's face, who with one of her eyebrows raised was shaking her head as if to say "this guy is a hopeless case"... 😂

^{📷 03 - 100 mm | 1/1250s | f/7.1 | ISO 640}

^{📷 04 - 100 mm | 1/800s | f/9 | ISO 640}

As expected, the huge insect was still there as if wishing to be warmed by the first rays of the sun (it would be around 7:00 AM). I have known this species since I was a child and played with them during the first months of the year in the fields. I know from experience that they usually perch on the walls in the mornings, waiting for the temperature to rise and the oxygen level in the air to be high enough to raise their powerful and striking flight. So this would be a delightfully easy photo session for me, as this insect was well bathed in natural light, just 1.5 m high and on a white surface (my whitewashed wall) which created a very suitable contrast for these photos.

^{📷 05 - 100 mm | 1/800s | f/9 | ISO 640}

^{📷 06 - 100 mm | 1/640s | f/9 | ISO 640}

I think this is a female individual of the species Tropidacris cristata, which is one of the largest grasshoppers in existence. This one I found was about 12 centimetres long, but I remember seeing bigger ones. In the past they used to appear in our region during the first months of the year until the end of May, but I suppose that climate change has made them change their behaviour and now they can appear all year round, although never in significant numbers, as they are rather scarce.

^{📷 07 - 100 mm | 1/640s | f/9 | ISO 640}

^{📷 08 - 100 mm | 1/1250s | f/7.1 | ISO 640}

In the central and western plains region of our country, these insects are often gregarious and form large swarms which made a serious threat to the cereal crops grown in these areas. Here in the region where my village is located, this has not happened since the 1920s, when (according to my maternal grandmother's telling me) the plague of locusts (as they are also called) devastated the crops of the valley around the village several years in a row... Let's hope that doesn't happen again, as these huge grasshoppers are beautiful one at a time, but I don't even want to imagine a giant cloud of them eating all the vegetation in their path.

^{📷 09 - 100 mm | 1/400s | f/9 | ISO 640}

Either way, this was a delightful photo shoot to do and this particular species of grasshopper is very conducive to this, due its fantastic body characteristics and remarkably calm character. So as I said: "September is going very well as far as photos are concerned"....

^{📷 10 - 100 mm | 1/1250s | f/9 | ISO 640}

ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL NOTE: Photographs captured with my Nikon D7000 DSLR camera in RAW format, then processed in Adobe Camera RAW for adjustments regarding light, sharpening, contrast and depth... The pictures are then exported to JPG format on which minor modifications such as straightening and adding watermarks were carried out using PhotoScape 3.6.3. and/or Photoshop

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Thank you very much for your visit and appreciation!

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Montalbán, Carabobo, Venezuela.