Crab Grab

I went to Puri (Odisha, India) after almost 15 years. I guess I can ignore an one hour visit to the city around 8 years back. As always Puri beach has its own charm. One can spend a whole day or rather days sitting on the beach and just keep looking at the waves. I did the same. Everyday, I'd find a non crowded spot along the beach and sit there for hours. Sometimes seeing the waves, sometimes clicking them. One day I realized that something moved on the sand just a couple of feet away from my legs. I kept looking until I found that it was a crab and then I found several crab holes around me and actually several crabs were peeping from their doors. In the following days I found out that crabs are overwhelmingly present throughout the entire beach of Puri. But they don't emerge at crowded places during the day unless They are hungry and unless they see food.

On my last day at he beach, I suddenly found an inch long bug which overturned while landing, struggling to get straight. The camera was on and the exposure was set since I was already clicking crabs a few minutes ago. I aimed the camera and WHOA!!! A fierce crab emerged from its hole just a few inches away from it. CLICK..went my first grab of the event that was quite presumable.

Within a second there was another hunter very close.

However, It may be a common understanding among the crab community that one of them left the scene a moment later. The other one didn't loose a moment and grabbed the live bug with a swift move.

But who gives up a life without a struggle. It was an amazing thing to see how the bug snapped out of the crab's claws. And really the crab waited for the next few seconds, stunned, before it jumped again.

Unfortunately, the bug still remained overturned and could not fly away. The hunter took its time to plan the next attack.

The next part was swift enough. The crab attacked again.

The Bug still tried its best to fight for its life.

But the claws of the crab were big and mighty enough to capture its prey. and then I realized that every movement of the crab was directed towards it's kitchen.

It took the crab less than a couple of seconds to capture the bug and enter the hole.

Now, don't ask me how crabs cook bug.
Thanks to the continuous shutter mode and abundant light that I could capture the whole thing in my camera.
All the photos were taken with Canon EOS 500D using a 75-300 telephoto zoom lens.
Exposure settings: 100 ISO, f/5.6, 1/500sec at 300mm focal length.

Venus Transit over the Sun

I had planned to photograph the last 'Venus transit over the Sun' of my life time. Well, an extended sleep and a cloudy sky prevented the most of it. However, I managed to cover the last 2 hours of the spectacle. The first image was taken at 8am IST. After that each photograph was clicked at an average gap of 15 minutes.

At first I thought a very low exposure would neutralize the high amount of Sunlight. but the plan actually failed. An X-ray plate came in handy. I cut a round piece of it from the exposed darker region and put it between the lens and the UV filter.