Orange Blossom and Honey Bee

[tamccain]

So, our orange tree is blooming like crazy. I thought I would take a few moments and take some pictures. The bees added some interest to the pictures. I have discovered that white flowers are really hard to expose correctly. I know that I could have taken pictures in better light (golden hours), but then the bees are gone. So, anyway here they are. If you have any tips let them be known!

[Geoff F]

You do seem to be a fraction bright on the whites, Tim. As you say, exposure is very difficult on this sort of scene. About your only real hope is to spot meter for the brightest area then attempt to recover any dark shadows during editing.

Sometimes I find that using a little bit of fill flash can actually help because it enables you to get a more even light over the whole scene which means you can reduce the highlight brightness a little.

Always tricky though, and no firm guidelines to work with.

When using flash like this I normally set the camera manually and adjust the flash output compensation as required. Or alternatively work with a manually set fixed output flash, which takes quite a bit of setting up and experimentation to get correct!

And I may consider cropping fractionally tighter, if the flower and bee was your intended subject. Maybe try a different size ratio; such as 5 x 4 ratio?

But, as I said, this sort of shot is so difficult to get perfect and often involves quite a bit of editing so you have done well here.

[Shadowman]

Be mindful of the soft breezes as you'll get fuzzy images like this, also bees are very active a fast shutter speed will help you out.

[IzzieK]

I was just about to comment on the high shutter speed but John beat me to it... Cropping closer will certainly help with your topic.