Born-again cicada... praise be!

[firstlight]

While going out to close the chook pen the other night, Anne-Louise noticed this against the slab of the shed.

Photos are a mixture of hers and mine while the cicada emerged from old skin. I had never seen anything like this before, and it was pretty cool.

Some images have been rotated, cropped and the curves adjusted slightly. Lighting was provided by a couple of LED torches.
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[troypiggo]

Very jealous, I'd love the opportunity to see, let alone photograph, this process.

[Liz]

Well done Tony and Anne-Louise!! Great capture indeed. :thumbsup:

[Jeffkop]

Amazing ... AND a great capture team !!!!! :thumbsup:
I feel like I was there !!!!!

Great set of pictures :eyepop:

IS this whats called ... getting too big for your boots ???

[telecasterguru]

Fabulous.

[RB]

How cool is that !!!
Great capture Tony and Anne-Louise, the animal world is so amazing.

Looks like the cicada's on the surface of the moon, which reminds me of an old sci-fi movie, H.G Wells' - "First men in the moon" LOL.

:thumbsup:

[smileypoorni]

Fantastic! Simply superb!
What an excellent timing?! Lucky you to get such a good capture!
I've never seen something like that before.

[michaellxv]

That's amazing. How long did the process take?

[firstlight]

We were even luckier that he camera had a charged battery :)



Thanks Liz



Our thought exactly.



Funny, I showed these shots at work and those were the same words someone else said!



We had never seen anything like that before either.



We took our first photo at 9:20, and the last one at 10:15. I suppose that the process would have taken around 1 1/2 hours?

Thanks for the comments everyone.

[astro_south]

Nice Tony (and Anne Louise :thumbsup:). I echo Troy's comments - great timing!

[spacezebra]

Absolutely stunning! We were just talking about this process - because we have found so many of the exoskeletons on our trees and shed!

Thank you so much for posting these!

Cheers Petra d.

[Octane]

Splendid.

H

[firstlight]

Thanks Andrew, Petra, and Humayun.

[Shep]

Great photos but ewwww, I could only look at a couple of them close up before the heebie jeebies got too much!

[spacezebra]

Tony and Louise
Consider sending this series to National Geo!

Cheers Petra d.

[StephenM]

Well spotted and captured! Like Petra I've seen lots of discarded exopskeletons, but I've never seen the moulting process.

Cheers,
Stephen

[p3nn]

Love it also. Never have I seen the process and your shots give a good start imho as well as an imaginative use I'm assuming a scope + cam mix ?

James

[firstlight]

Actually we captured the lot with a standard 18 - 55 mm kit lens we got with the 400D.

Some details are required I guess. Some of the images were taken at around these settings:

50mm @ f7.1, 1/13 sec, ISO 800. Illumination was provided by a pair of white LED torches. Canon 400D.