When we lived in our little house in New York City, we were plagued by snails. They were all over the place, especially after it rained. At one point, it looked like they were eating the mortar between the bricks in the stairs at the entrance to the front of the house.

So one day I decided to take a picture of a snail. It's not like they're going to require a really fast shutter speed. Not exactly sports photography, if you know what I mean. But you do have to get close, and you do have to try to keep the whole snail in focus.

And the result is a snail sitting for his portrait. When I showed this picture to another photographer, he asked me if I had Photoshopped another shell onto the snail. Nope. It's the original, just a little jazzed up to make the snail happy.

Looking back, they were really pretty harmless, especially compared to some of the wildlife here in Virginia.