Sunday Slowpoke

Here’s one for you: Why did the snail cross the road? Splat! He didn’t.

The sidewalk is a dangerous place for a slow-moving mollusca on a Sunday morning, with pedestrians reveling the fresh breeze or walking dogs—and none looking down where the foot falls. I spotted this little slogger while walking with my wife to Trader Joe’s. I got down low with Leica Q, for a few fast closeups, before Annie moved the snail safely aside.

The camera has a dedicated Macro mode, accessed from one of several controls around the lens. I captured the Featured Image, with aperture manually set for sunny street shooting, at 10:10 a.m. PDT. Vitals: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/800 sec, 28mm.

For the second photo, I switched to auto-aperture. Vitals are identical, except for f/7.1. Both pics are crops but this one just a little to remove distraction on the horizon.

Fancy as the full-frame digicam may be, some smartphones—even those forgotten and obsolete—are superb shooters up close. I shot this other snail portrait with Nokia N97 in our apartment’s courtyard six years ago. Vitals, June 14, 2009, 9:26 a.m. PDT: f/2.8, ISO 100, 1/143 sec, 5.4mm.