I'm a little dyslexic when it comes to numbers. I blame all those crazy word problems where Johnny has seven apples and Sally has two and if the train going 90 miles per hour gets halfway to Judy's house in ten minutes, is it time for a margarita? (Yes.)

This spills over into my struggle with the concept of the camera's f-stop, where the bigger the number, the smaller the opening of the lens. Whose brilliant idea was that? And then, because life isn't already challenging enough (seriously, Miley Cyrus?) depth of field is an inverse proportion to aperture size.

I can get there eventually -- bigger number = smaller opening = bigger depth of field -- but by the time I do, my subject, most recently this lizard, is looking over his shoulder saying dude, have you got the shot yet? It's hot and I'm hungry and I'm already missing a piece of my tail.