Bronze Tiger Beetle | front-on

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Found this tiger beetle (family Cicindelinae) at Avarsa, Karnataka. If anyone can help with the exact ID it would be great. It was more or less 1cm long.
Tiger beetles are fast, aggressive predatory beetles, with mouth parts developed for the same. Shot from this perspective as I wanted a closer look at the mouth parts. I also took a few top and side view shots for documentation purposes.

Canon 500D, Canon 100mm Macro USM
Aperture-Priority AE
Tv 1/125
Av 8.0
EC -1/3
ISO 1600
Had to crop out some distracting hints of vegetation. Cropped ~30% equally from all sides to retain the original composition.

Thanks, C&C welcome

[Joshi Bhavya]

I like the Front view shot..Nice clear eyes and head parts..Also like DOF
There is lot of space both size why don't you crop it.. ??

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Bhavya, I didn't want to crop too much as that will cause some detail loss and make the noise more visible. I wanted to retain some space all around to depict some of the habitat, didn't want a tight portrait.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Lovely details. I like the space all around, I agree it gives a feel of its habitat. It looks like a knight in armour :). Wish the white thread (?) on the left was not present. Thanks for the detailed information. Look forward to more.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Interesting. Would love to see that mouth part in action. :D How far were you ie. subject distance?

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Sabyasachi, I am sure you will like these beetles a lot... one reason is the name itself :D. Not sure about the distance, I think it was shot at near 1:1 MFD, maybe 6-7 inches working distance.

[Bhargava Srivari]

An interesting creature. The small DoF is intentional, is it? A nice touch, I must say:) The DoF at that working distance will only be a few millimeters? :)

tfs