Any event that has kids and bugs seems like a natural for good pictures, but it can be surprisingly hard to shoot them.

At this bug show at a library, I figured that a good shot would either need to show a bug clearly (with kids still visible), or catch a good expression on some kid's face (with a bug shown, even if small).

I figured that in this situation the chance of a lively expression was pretty small because the "Eew, yuck" factor was small: kids came there expecting to see bugs. Had it been, say, the captive audience of a classroom of fifth-graders, I'd expect more grimaces.

So I opted for a clear shot of some bug with kids in the background.

Bugs, being so small, pretty much cannot be shown as more than a small dot unless the camera being really close.

If I used a 50mm macro or any telephoto for such a shot, the result would be a shot of a bug with a very blurry background containing the face of, at most, one kid. And it would require careful positioning of bug, kid and camera and careful focusing through the viewfinder. This would be hard to do when the bug guy is moving the bug around so that all kids can see it. It would also require me to move continuously through the scrum of seated kids as I followed the bug, trying to frame and focus shots. No-way.

What proved more do-able was to pre-focus a 17mm wide angle lens, stop down as much as I could for added depth of field (f4.8 at ISO 1600), and shoot hail-mary-style, holding the camera about six inches from the bug, just guessing where to aim it to get the bug with kids in the background.

This is the best of about 40 frames. Many of them aren't sharp, either due to movement of bug or camera, or because I held the camera a little too close or far away.