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Here the rains are becoming less frequent, indicating the dry season is about to begin. But the ambient humidity is still quite high and the days oscillate between sunny hours and other times with clouds. So, this combination of climatic factors is very good for going to the paddocks surrounding the village and making insect macros, whose populations remain high thanks to the recent rains. Also the wild flowers are still abundant and charming to photograph...

In the first two photos you see a very clear demonstration of why I love to take this kind of photos. I was calibrating the parameters of my camera taking some pictures of that "boring" ant on the wire of a fence and WHAM! Coming of nowhere this funny dragonfly appeared and landed there, making the ants fall into the void... :)

Rare plants, beautiful and ugly insects, even a huge spider... Everything during midday today seemed to conspire for me to take macro pictures! ;)

If you know where to look, you can find a lot of interesting and beautiful things to take pictures of this kind. So what I usually do is to walk along the path very slowly, looking at the plants and other surfaces in detail until I find those details. At the same time I mentally think about the camera settings to match the subtle variations in brightness that have to do with the coming and going of clouds and the presence or absence of tall vegetation.

Nature is fascinating and from time to time I can commit "small indiscretions" :) like taking these photos of a couple of butterflies copulating... Certainly these are things that happen on a level that we sometimes overlook. But life is always there, going on and on...

Orthoptera are not my favourite bugs, but I have to agree that some of these look quite elegant and are worthy of a photograph like this one. :)

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Thank you very much for your visit and appreciation!

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_{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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Montalbán, Carabobo, Venezuela.