Caterpillar Closeup

I am glad that I discovered my interests in photography. Ever since I started picking up the camera, especially so since I got my Nikon D60, I realized that I paid more attention to the oft missed world of the minuscule. Those of you who have been with my blog for a while would know how much I like taking pictures of small creepy crawlies (to the delight and also dismay of some). My hobby has opened my eyes to the almost invisible, mostly ignored, and largely unnoticed minute details in the world around us. Sometimes I feel sad that most of us would miss seeing the beauty in the small things. We can discover a lot from viewing the most mundane things up close. And sometimes, creatures we regard as creepy or ugly can reveal their true beauties when we scale ourselves down to their size and try to see them eye to eye.

I was walking around in my apartment when I almost stepped on this little green caterpillar. It wasn't a big squishy caterpillar that one might find featured as a grub delicacy in some foreign place. It was pretty small, less than an inch long and definitely thinner than a satay stick. I picked it up from the white tile floor and set it on a thin stack of white paper. And of course, I ran over to the trusty ol' camera bag and grabbed my arsenal to shoot this little bug.




The little bugger was hard to photograph. It kept moving and wriggling and turning its head to different directions (probably trying to find its way to the edge of the paper). Because I used the reverse lens technique, the caterpillar's movement meant that it gets out of focus easily, and I had difficulty keeping it in focus. Out of the many, some are pretty decent and shareable. One of them is this side profile of the caterpillar. To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure where the eyes of this caterpillar were. What I noticed is that it's got some strands of hair sticking out from various parts of its body including the head. The hair strands were sparsely distributed, unlike other hairy caterpillars. Maybe this was a youngin', soon it'll grow a full body of hair and closeup fanatics like me would keep away from it for a change.




Here's one where you can see the 'face' of the caterpillar. I still am not sure where its eyes were.




Another perspective on how small this caterpillar was: you can actually see the thin side of the white paper for size reference. The white paper was a normal printing paper. Grab a printing paper and look at its thickness. Now look at the picture. You'll get a rough sense of the size of the caterpillar and how small it was.

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I suddenly am reminded of the story where King Solomon's (Sulaymaan A.S.) troops were passing through the Wadi Naml (the valley of the ants, if I'm not mistaken) and how the King made sure his troops would avoid stepping on the small insects. This story tells us to appreciate the lives of Allah's creatures no matter how small. And that collateral deaths, no matter how insignificant the people/creatures killed may seem to be, should be avoided to our best efforts.

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Have a wonderful day, everyone! Hope you liked the pics. And sorry to those who don't.