I used to think these guys were giant mosquitoes… You know – they are large, rather like Daddy Long Legs. But they fly at night, snagging mozzies as they go. This one was clinging to my bedroom wall for hours yesterday – keeping my husband company as he went about his business.
He was gone in the morning.
One of the things I love about the new camera is that I took this with a 300mm lens, since I have not yet got a macro lens. This post is about 1/25 of the size of the original final, cropped image…
Titirangi Storyteller 
I’m completely mesmerized by the pattern on his wings. Nature is an amazing thing. Thanks for sharing!
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You’re most welcome. Photography turned me into a nature girl – so many interesting things to examine that I think I took for granted before… There is wow everywhere you look, even in cities…
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Never thought of a fly as beautiful before. This one is. Great picture.
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Thanks – what I was saying last night, but fumbled was that I had shrunk the fly, not cropped the picture to 1/25. It was a great huge image and the wings are just so beautiful… of course the sight of my hubby and me shooting it was rather silly – me with the camera, the bedroom lamp aimed at it and him holding a flashlight covered with a bit of wrapping foam to add a bit more light…
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Had to share my first thought…I hope the fly was gone and not your husband! LOL 😉
Nature’s design, so beautiful, and yet resilient. Send some our way
to eat the squitos and spare us from West Nile in the states.
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Husband – definitely still here! The fly was huge, but anything that could devour him overnight would be a lot more massive…
This guy is native to NZ, but the belong to one of the largest families of insects, tupilidae and varieties can be found all over the world. Not a whole lot on regional varieties in Wikipedia, but I found this:
The giant crane fly (Holorusia rubiginosa) of the western United States can reach 38 millimetres (1.5 in). (Which is about how big this one was, excluding the legs.)
Unfortunately the ratio of mosquitoes to crane flies will always be unsatisfactory to us. If they ate them all (which is what we would like) the crane flies would also die off…
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I love your makeshift studio: wrapping foam on a flashlight. Very high tech! Such great results. I cannot begin to imagine what you will do when you get a macro lens.
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Watch out world!
Our Christmas present to ourselves was a set of proper studio lights… I now have 7 tripods set up in my office… one for the camera and the rest, lights and a white backdrop… Can wait to master them!
But one must still be prepared with the foam covered flashlight because you can’t pick up a crane fly and get it to pose where you have your lights set up…
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I’ll have to remember the foam colored flashlight thingy . . .
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I often carry a flashlight for emergency lighting purposes. I almost never use a flash for candid photo taking (I use it for infil though if the subject is backlit, and of course in the studio when it’s easy to control the amount of flash, how it’s directed and you can diffuse it with softboxes…)
I have also used sheets, pieces of paper or cardboard to reflect light, borrowed lighters to illuminate the underside of mushrooms (which didn’t turn out all that well as the flame cast an orange glow…)
I almost always wear a hat which also serves as a tool to block glare and I have many images featuring the bottom of my hat at the top of the frame…
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I used to wear hats all of the time, but have long since stopped, unless it’s terribly cold outside. Love the bit about the brim at the top of the frame.
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