This female mantis was in the garden on an unusually warm November afternoon. She was grooming herself when I shot this picture of her. The small black dots on her compound eyes are those ommatidia (simple eyes) that she is using to see my camera lens. After this picture was taken, I tried to get closer to her with the camera lens. She may have seen her reflection on the UV filter - at any rate, she attacked the camera. I jumped back, looking for her on my head or shoulder. She was sitting on top of the SD9, having triumphed over the large black object that was pestering her. A bit after that, a bright green male mantis tried to engage her in a mating dance. She attacked him with the same ferocity that she used on the camera. I guess she was having a bad afternoon.

As usual, I was using the 105 mm lens, and minimal post hoc manipulation of the image, only in SPP. Sharpness was reduced to -0.3.