In my basement there are shelves full of paint, stain, tools and scrap building material. There is also one whole shelf dedicated to killing bugs. We recently experienced our annual tiny ant infestation and Wonder Boy headed downstairs to see if we had anything to kill them off. He came back upstairs and just looked at me. “Why do we have so many bottles of spray to kill flying bugs?” I explained that in my opinion flying bugs are the absolute worst so if a poison will kill a flying bug, certainly it will kill a stupid crawling bug. I don’t think my answer satisfied him. One bottle dedicated to killing flying bugs? Sure. But 5?

I have always hated bugs. I freak out about them like a … bad girl stereotype. I scream. I jump and run away. When I was younger and putting dishes into the dishwasher, I saw an ant on my leg and jumped onto the open door of the dishwasher. Obviously it broke. Obviously it was hard to explain to my parents why an ant caused such destruction. Another time I was moving the lawn and got distracted by a spider, probably a daddy-longlegs , and ran the mower over a rock. That led to a broken lawn mower. Again, my parents were not impressed with the bug cause.

It’s all pretty ironic then that in my photography classes, which I am taking to accomplish things on my 100 list, my favorite pictures keep being of bugs. I’ve been inspired by some photos my friend took. (There are no bug pictures on his blog yet, but trust me, he’s taken awesome ones.)

In class on Tuesday I asked the teacher to critique some of my photos, which he’ll do for everyone. I’ve found this to be incredibly helpful. Also, I miss the days of school when you got immediate feedback on things you did. I like to be graded for the quality of my work… I got really positive feedback on the photos I shared (below) but I got fabulous kudos for my bug picture. And I am proud to report that after taking the picture I did not scream, run or kill the bug.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.