Snails can be beautiful

It`s coming, and it`s big. Well, maybe you can guess how big by the size of the blades of grass and the curb. The snail has traveled a long way to get here. It started in the middle of the street which is way back behind, at the other end of this curb. We watched it progress as we were doing our morning exercise. We looked for it each time we made a circuit around the temple grounds. It crossed the street successfully. It managed to go up to the top of the curb. By that time we were finished with our exercise. I just had to get a picture, so I got our camera and went back out to find the snail.
The reason this photo is a bit fuzzy must be because the subject was moving so fast? Imagine if you were carrying your house on your back; you would think this was a fast house moving job.


I took lots of photos, trying to figure out how to take close-ups with our camera. (I told Andrew in Japan when we bought the camera that I was just an aim and shoot photographer, so he didn't need to confuse me with details. Now I needed some details.) I tried push and turning buttons and knobs to improve the picture. I also had problems trying to keep the camera steady. If I rested it on the curb, it was too close. I was not willing to lie flat on my stomach on the pavement of a parking stall to take the picture. I could not even look at the viewer to see if I was aimed right. So I went home thinking that none of the pictures were any good. I determined to get at least one good snail picture. The next day I looked up on the internet how to adjust our camera for close-ups. For more than a week we did not see any snails. Then we saw only a couple of small ones. [See the next blog.]
Just when I decided I would have to settle for a shot of a small snail I down-loaded all my pictures from the camera and discovered that I had some pics of the big snail that would at least be interesting. Now you must understand that "big" is a relative term, but this snail was at least 3 to 3 1/2 inches long and about an inch wide.