An Unexpected Favorite
In a year in which I visited the Tetons and Yellowstone, I never expected one of my favorite wildlife pictures to be taken in my own backyard.
We’ve got at least a couple of different types of leafhoppers in our yard, with my favorite being these little green ones. I had spotted this one on a rose bush and decided to play around with some handheld macro pictures. Most macro pictures focus on high magnification, but since I was shooting handheld I shot more of an environmental macro.
I used a shallow depth of field, which usually works against you in a macro picture but I love the way it turned the leaves and stems into an abstract of colors and shapes.
Hopping Stripes
Just like racing stripes make a car go faster, hopping stripes let you hop farther. I’ve no idea if they work, as this hopper never moved from the leaf while I photographed it.
Beautiful little thing though.
Man in the Hopper
Poets waxed about the man in the moon, but why not the man in the hopper? This little green leafhopper was on one of our rose bushes and I was intrigued by the yellow face on the hopper’s back.
The Wrong Camoflage?
Viewed up close, it might seem like this leafhopper has the wrong camoflage — it would be invisible on a brown leaf, but easily visible on a green leaf as shown here. However, the camoflage actually works quite well even on a green plant. The hopper was tiny, so it looked like a little brown spot on the leaf and hardly worth a second glance.