While on vacation, I was sitting in my sister's
backyard enjoying a glass of vino, and I noticed this bee resting on a
purple cone flower. I ran and grabbed my camera from the car, hoping the
bee would stick around. I didn't want to disturb the bee, so I knew I would
use the 300mm to get this shot. To fill the frame, I needed to focus
several feet closer than my 300mm would normally allow, but a quick addition
of an extension tube solved that problem. The bee ended up resting on this
flower for over 30 minutes. I guess even bees take a little vacation now
and then!
Technical Details: 0.3 sec at f/8 - 300mm lens with 36mm of
extension - cloudy white balance +3 - RAW ISO 100
The exposure for this
image was simple. I set an aperture of f/8 to give me a little depth of
field to keep the flower and bee crisp but still render the background as a
soft blur, and then simply set the shutter speed that indicated a correct
exposure on the in camera matrix meter. There was no wind, so other than
movements of the bee, the slow shutter speed wasn't a problem. The bee
wasn't moving much at all, so I was able to fire off several frames.
This
image is available as a higher-resolution wallpaper
here.
