"He" is right, as the females lack that red spot. A nice portrait, as sometimes these little ones can be very quick.

Linda, my favorite is the first shot. As for how you got the correct exposure for the effect you wanted, why be shy about it? Whatever works is what a photographer uses! The Accepted methods are just guidelines - and if they don't always work for a certain situation, then we have to make up our own methods. Kudos to you for stepping out of the box in this respect.

I use an Apple laptop, MacBook Pro. To enlarge without downloading, I just hold the command key down and then hit the +/= key several times. This will enlarge both text and images.

Your image is wonderful. Makes all that hard work and planning totally worth it. Congratulations!

I live near an excellent local dealer who has been in business for years. He'll match any B&H price. I do have to pay sales tax, but I don't have to pay shipping. He also wil rent bodies and lenses, tripods, etc. I like to support local businesses whenever possible.

I'd start by putting the camera's shooting mode in Aperture Priority. Set the aperture to f/8, which is a good general one to use to get a decent depth of field - in which a lot of the image is in focus. If you want to isolate a subject from the background, like a person, then change the aperture to f/4 or wider and get closer to the person. This should render the person in focus and the background mostly out of focus.

ISO - important to set this too. For bright days, try 200 or 400. For cloudy days try 600 to 800.

White Balance - this is important, too. As a beginner, perhaps Auto WB would be best for you to start with. Once you have some experience with f/stops and shutter speeds and ISO settings, then you can try setting the WB to daylight, cloudy, incandescent, etc.

Most of all have fun. Shoot each scene several times, if you can, by changing one setting at a time and see what happens.

I use my left hand to shade the lens from the sun that is falling on it. You just have to be careful, esp with wide angle lenses, not to get your hand or a part of it in the image. So hold you hand above the lens at a few inches distance and this should do the trick.

You may also be able to find a tree to stand under so your camera's lens is shaded that way.

You have a fixed aperture, so try putting the camera on Aperture Priority and then play with the ISO, starting low and changing to higher and higher. You'll have to make test shots like this until you can get it figured out. The higher the ISO, the faster the shutter speed.

I'm Nikon user and currently have a D300. I wish I'd waited a month for when the D700 would be issued, but I didn't know that at the time.

I just recently purchased the Fuji Finepix X100 and love it. This has a fixed lens - 28mm and no way to change the focal length, so you must zoom with your feet, so to speak. The D300 feels like a tank, weight-wise, compared to the X100.

Or you can also explore the offerings of the 4/3rds format of cameras - some of them are excellent and getting better. So go to a local camera dealer and ask to try out various cameras. If you find one you like, ask if you can rent it for a week.

1. Shoot in your camera's color mode, not B&W, as you'll get more pixel info to play with in post processing. Your images should turn out looking mostly magenta with low contrast.

2. Shoot on a bright sunny day for best results. Shooting on a cloudy dull day will result in flatter images.

3. You'll need to use a post processing software program like Photoshop to convert to B&W, increase contrast, sharpen, etc. Or you can play around with color settings with some amazing results.

Best of all, have fun. Hope this helps. Flo