A month ago it was easy to spot the early-emerging insects, because very few of them were flying. Now, though, the air is so full of bees, flies, and other aerial creatures that it is a little harder to detect the dragonflies and damselflies that are my primary targets.
As I walk along grassy paths now, little clouds of grasshoppers burst into the air in front of me. Most of the grasshoppers jump out of sight, but occasionally one will perch on some nearby vegetation and remain immobile, hoping perhaps that I will not see him. Last week at Occoquan Regional Park I captured a shot of one such grasshopper.
I am definitely not an expert on grasshoppers, so I had to pore over page after page of entries on the internet before I finally concluded that this might be a Green-striped Grasshopper (Chortophaga viridifasciata). Still unsure of the identification, I posted a request for help on the BugGuide website and an expert there confirmed my identification of this grasshopper.
From an aesthetic perspective, I loved the curve of the spiky stem of the plant and my initial instinct was to go for a looser crop of the image, as you can see below in the second photo. However, I realized that viewers could not see the details of the grasshopper, so I made the more zoomed-in version that you can see as the first photo below.
The two images, which are actually just different versions of the same shot, complement each other and serve different functions. The first one focuses more on the grasshopper as the primary subject, while the second one makes the environment a co-star. I like both versions.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 