The photo was taken mid-October 2019 - during a vacation in Southern Tuscany. I wasn't there just to photograph these species, but I was looking forward to finding those little mantids as well - as I had found them there the year before.
Early in the morning, the mantids are still very calm and there's time to find a good composition. With the early morning light coming through the trees and bushes at the edge of the meadow, I quickly knew this could be a great opportunity for shooting a silhouette of this fascinating insect - and I already had black & white processing in my mind on location.
After pre-processing the RAW photo in Lightroom, mainly tuning the contrast and tonal values, I've used "Silver Efex Pro 2" for the black& white conversion in Photoshop.
