Mike Powell

As I was hiking last Thursday in Prince William Forest Park, I spotted a cool-looking mushroom on a moss-covered fallen tree. I crouched low to the ground so that I could capture an eye-level shot of the mushroom. While I was carefully composing a few shots in the camera’s viewfinder, my eyes detected some movement in the corner of the frame and I was a bit shocked to see the head of a Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon fasciatus), one of the few lizard species in Virginia.

Skinks are generally very skittish, so I froze in place and slowly changed the focus point from the mushroom (first photo) to the skink (second photo). Once I knew that I had captured those shots, I moved slightly to the side to see if I could get a better angle on the skink.

I never could not see the skink’s entire body, but really like the final shot that shows a lot of the details of the skink. I am not sure what the skink was doing, but it seemed to be focusing intently on something. Perhaps it was so focused on a potential prey that it was less aware of me than it might otherwise have been.

A small change in focus made a big difference in the final results. Maybe that’s true in other aspects of our lives.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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