New to forum! Bee in my backyard. C & C

CMfromIL · Oct 11, 2011

Hi! New to the forum. Just got a DSLR and trying new pictures. This particular picture however was done with my Olympus point n shoot. It's one of my better shots, but I'm curious as to what others think. It hasn't been touched up.

kyrontf · Oct 11, 2011

Welcome to the forum and the world of DSLRs. I very recently migrated to one (sort of) from a Canon PowerShot too.

Cute bee. I find it hard to get good shots of them - they move so fast. It would be nice if the railings in the background on the right and that blue thing on the left weren't there, as I think they add a bit of an unnatural feel to the shot. The same I guess with the blue stuff at the upper left. A crop could deal with all that, methinks. Aside from that, I like it. Nice work!

PS. Those railings look almost exactly like the ones I have. :lmao:

shootermcgavin · Oct 11, 2011

damn it barely looks real, pretty cool shot

jrice12 · Oct 11, 2011

I don't have a big problem with the background, it is out of focus just enough to not be distracting - my eye stays on the flower and the bee. Good compositon overall, focus is fair with DOF just about right. Lighting worked out well for you, not too harsh and certainly not flat. Always like to see pollen on a bee, means it has been busy doing its job (and adds interest). Pose of the bee is good and its scale is not bad (cropping tighter might bring the railing into a bad position, right now it is 1/3rd in from right and does little harm - also like the orange flower over there to balance the rail). Like the pink reflection of the flower on the tips of the wings.

CMfromIL · Oct 12, 2011

Thank you all for your kind words. I was digging on my hard drive, and came across a couple more images from that afternoon. I had forgotten about these:

kyrontf · Oct 12, 2011

I think I like the original one best overall because of the pose. You can clearly see the bee working away on the flower. I do find the juxtaposition of a busy bee and a comparatively quiet background interesting though, as in #2.

EchoingWhisper · Oct 13, 2011

I like the old one. The two new one have quite distracting backgrounds.

shootermcgavin · Oct 13, 2011

CM I just had to look again, I'm just above you and I don't think I've ever seen a bee that big. I keep looking at it and thinking how much it would hurt to get stung by it. That thing has to be like 2" long. Was that an abnormally large bee or no? I really like the first picture.

CMfromIL · Oct 13, 2011

I got really, really lucky with the top shot (all of them really). I was about 5" away from the bee/flower taking the first one. The others probably 7-10" away. It was a large bee, but of course in the picture it appears freakishly large! I printed it up on my Pixma Pro9000 Mark II in the 13"x19" format. It's unbeliveable. I have gotten many compliments on it, hanging in my office. At that size, I did crop off a bit on the left eliminating the blue edge. I believe it was one of my daughters standing off camera in jeans/red shirt.

Best guess from memory is that body and all it was about 1.5" long. Made one heck of a buzz as he flew away. Kinda like a C-130 transport plane taking off!

They are harmless as long as you don't tick them off.

shootermcgavin · Oct 13, 2011

There's an area in town that has hundreds of those things jumping from flower to flower, but none with pollen on them like yours and I'm almost sure they're all about half the size of that one. He almost looks too big to support the flower. That's an awesome shot. I got stung by one of those yellow jackets or whatever they're called when I was in high school and they hurt far worse than any other bee that has stung me. They don't sting often though the one that got me fell off a flower I was walking by and down into the crack of my shoe. Keep up the great shots! I love the ones that just make you keep coming back to look again.