Jason Stewart  


Honey Bee by Jason Stewart

May 2020 - Honey Bee

About the Image(s)

On one of the rare sunny and warmer days during this quarantine I sat in the yard with my macro lens next to the crocus flowers. Honey bees were frequenting them. It took about two hours while laying on my stomach to capture a hand full of decent shots. First I tried auto focus but it didnt work well. So worked at anticipating where they would land next and pre-focused my lens.
Canon 1DXii, Tamron 90mm Macro 1/8000 sec. f/4 90mm, ISO 8000


This round’s discussion is now closed!
9 comments posted




 
Oh my goodness! The action freeze has come out perfect and the composition is also very nice.
IMO, two distractions to my eyes. 1 the grass blade with highlights and the other is purple flower in the extreme left. I am not distracted much by the small purple flower on bottom right though.
This may just be a bit of nit picking point while I totally understand how hard it is too get such an action oriented subject.
Nothing else to add. Great image.   Posted: 05/03/2020 16:05:35



Larry Treadwell   Larry Treadwell
The busy bee makes for an interesting subject and you have kept him sharp and clear in the image.

Background are as important to an image as the subject itself and that is true in this case. While the subject is dominate the many colored distractions around the perimeter of frame offer too many distractions. I would suggest a bit of Photoshop surgery to clean up some of these distractions.

I've attached an example.   Posted: 05/05/2020 08:50:53
Comment Image
 
Thank you, I do like your crop. To be honest I didn't catch those as distracting elements until you pointed them out.   Posted: 05/12/2020 11:52:58
Larry Treadwell   Larry Treadwell
It always works out better when you have more eyes to review the image. Sometimes you just get too close to your own work and need that neutral point of view.   Posted: 05/12/2020 13:55:03



Michael Weatherford   Michael Weatherford
Nice composition on a pleasingly soft picture. The bee's eye is in focus and nice lighting. The image looks kinda grainy, as in an extreme crop. Maybe it's the super high ISO. But I see you have the 1DX camera so maybe it can handle it. Good idea to remove the distractions around the edges. Anyway, a very nice image!   Posted: 05/06/2020 17:48:43



 
Jason, great close-up. Nice capture of the bee in motion with 1/90 sec. I do like the bokah in the background as it brings the eye to the foreground with bee nad the crocus flower.

There are three areas of detail that caught my attention. 1. Lack of sharpness of the flower. Lack of sharpness to the body of the bee, 3. when enlarged, I can count the pixels. I would attribute this to your aperture at f/4. If this were enlarged for print, it would realy be degraded by the noise. A smaller aperture f/8-f/11, would have likely brought in more detail in the foreground leaving your background still with bokah to blend in. Very nice natural light and the contrast with the shadows and light are nicely compensated. I would concur with Michael, that the noise could be caused by the high ISO.

Shooting these close-up shots is a definite challenge. I know, take a look at my previous image from August 2019 of the bee I shot and cropped. Not an easy feat.   Posted: 05/09/2020 13:12:00
 
The noise was most likely the high ISO. I shoot in manual with auto iso and my location was very tricky as one point was complete shade and another quite sunny.   Posted: 05/12/2020 11:54:09



Richard Matheny   Richard Matheny
Anytime you can stop the action of a flying honey bee it's a good day. He seems to be nice a sharp as it should be a 1/8000 of a sec. shutter speed. I agree With everyone else, a little less ISO and and increase in aperture may have helped but that is just a guess on my part. I wasn't there so I don't know the conditions you were shooting with. Hey in my book even attempting to shoot macro with a moving target deserves a vote.
  Posted: 05/09/2020 13:52:46



 
Jason,

Yes, I agree with Richard, any capture of a moving object in macro is a winning day! The bee capture is excellent, and I like the composition. I do really like Larry's modifications. A much cleaner image. Really well done.   Posted: 05/13/2020 16:12:08