Rosalia alpina (Linnaeus, 1758), female

Last year I already wanted to revisit a region that axel.becker73 kindly shared with some friends a couple of years ago. It's a place in the German Alps where you still have a somewhat healthy population of the Alpine longhorn beetles. However, the plan didn't really work out last year.
I tackled the plan again this year and checked the weather forecast throughout July to find a weekend with a forecast for warm and sunny weather. ...the weather was shitty down there for a couple of weeks. It was already at the end of July when I finally decided that I would go down there again, even though the forecasted conditions were still far from ideal. But there was not much time left to see one of these gorgeous creatures as they're only active for a couple of weeks in July and at the beginning of August. So, I asked a colleague and photographer friend if she wanted to join and drove down there on a Saturday morning just to leave again on Sunday afternoon. But as you can see the effort was totally worth it.

After some hours of searching with rain showers every now and then we finally found one specimen just before sunset. It was a rather old and sluggish female that was still crawling around at the base of a sycamore tree probing bark with its ovipositor. Probably one of the last specimens that were still alive so late in the season. It was already very dark and therefore the background would drown into total blackness when using a flash paired with a high f-stop, short shutterspeed and low ISO. The image is still much better compared to what I got the first time when I was still trying to figure out how a proper camera actually works. It's just amazing observing these beetles in nature. However, we didn't have too much time because it was getting dark already and another rain shower started when we were still getting the last shots.

The long ride was absolutely worth it even though we only had a few hours for photography. The Alps are an incredibly attractive region even if you don't photograph invertebrates. It feels that nature is still somewhat intact when you are surrounded by these mountains.

Two more shots in the comment section (click to enlarge).

Taken on: August 3, 2019

Tags:

Rosalia

alpina

longhorn

beetle

long

horn

alpen

bock

käfer

alpenbockkäfer

insect

insecta

hexapod

hexapoda

arthropod

arthropoda

coleoptera

cerambycidae

holometabola

holometabol

adult

longicorn

sony

a6000

sel90

wide

angle

macro

makro

closeup « less

Sets appears in: • Beetles (Coleoptera)

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Camera: Sony ILCE-6000, f/8.0, 1/160 sec, 90mm (=135mm), ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony ILCE-6000
Lens:	FE 90mm F2.8 Macro G OSS
Aperture:	f/8.0
Exposure Time:	0.006 sec (1/160)
Focal Length:	90mm (35mm equivalent: 135mm)
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	On, Return not detected
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Center-weighted average
White Balance:	Auto
Saturation:	Low
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.6 (Windows)
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