I recongnise that “B**tard snail”! He got me sacked from my last job. I tried to tread on it. The boss didn’t like it and stopped me in time. Well, the thing had been following me all day!
I hope that your muddy knees have recovered :) Looks like you’re using on-camera flash of some sort, perhaps get the flash off camera and soften the light a bit to stop the glare bouncing back. Fepth of Field is very tricky on these type of shots, once you get past about F11 diffraction can soften the image a bit but it’s always a comprmoise on macro shots.