The bee is such a busy soul...

[ucci]

Nothing to say about this. Just looking for comment and advice please. BTW for those who are too young to know of it, the heading comes from a clever little 4 line verse someone wrote about bees and their offspring.

[vicphotog]

I like the perspective of the bee sitting on the outside of the petal, rather than in the centre of the flower

[ucci]

Thank you, Rachel. I just wasn't sure if it would work or not. As you say, the bee is normally shot inside the flower. Just lucky to get this one I guess.

[Donald]

Ken - What I'm most fascinated about is how you've got such a narrow Depth of Field when shooting at f5.6? Even shooting right out at 250mm on your 55-250, it seems shallow. Is that the effect of that lens?

I'm with Rachel - the composition with the bee on the outside of the flower is good. How did you light this?

[tameigh]

I think it is a touch flat tonally. I bet that if you played with adding adjustment layers of level or curves, it doesn't matter, what is important is the blend mode. Then played (varied the opacity) with different variations of multiply, overlay, and screen, you could increase the depth of tone a bit and make the photograph pop more.

deepen the dark tones and lighten the lights. Theoretically, I suppose, curves alone with accomplish this, but it seems like using layers as described above gives more control.

I don't usually add quotes to my posts, but here is one:

"You may say I'm a hacker.... but I'm not the only one.." - Nadeem, a programmer I used to work with.

[ucci]

Ken - What I'm most fascinated about is how you've got such a narrow Depth of Field when shooting at f5.6? Even shooting right out at 250mm on your 55-250, it seems shallow. Is that the effect of that lens?

I'm with Rachel - the composition with the bee on the outside of the flower is good. How did you light this?

Donald,
I think it just has to be a charateristic of my lens. It was nothing special on my part, apart from setting the AV to f5.6 and shooting. The hardest part which took moist of my attention was tracking the bee. Butterflies and bees tend not to be the most co-operative of subjects.
Ken


As for the lighting? What a disaster. Natural only. Sun beside me on my shoulder around 4pm. Why did I do it? An opportunistic shot taken when we were leaving a friend's place and the colour of her Peruvian Lilies caught my eye. And then I saw the bees. And one thing led to another.... Had I been a 'real' photographer I should have realized the problems and sensibly walked away...but you know how it is when you let loose a mad amatuer in charge of a camera

[ucci]

Tim, Thank you for helpful advice. I will giove it a go.
Ken

[ucci]

Tim
Is this any better? Or have I gone too far?
k

[tameigh]

I would say somewhere between the two, but you get the idea, obviously.

[ucci]

Thanks Tim