Monday, April 27, 2009

Ohh the bees!!

Since I was young I always liked having a camera in front of my eye. And as much as I loved photography I never seem to get the pictures to come out the way I want. Not only did I want to be Spider-man as a child, but I also wanted to be Peter Parker. What an awesome job to have. Just taking pictures. And while I do have an eye for it, I just need to commit myself to learning all the bells and whistles of my camera in order to have my photos come out the way I want. A video camera on the other hand is my best friend, and has been since the age of 7.

Now that it's Spring time again I'm busting out the camera to get back in the game. I was motivated after seeing some of this guy's photo's on his blog. If you want to see some beautiful pictures, go check out Michael Flux's Page. He's got some amazing stuff on there!

So the other day while walking my dog I almost stepped on a plethora of ants. I immediately ran upstairs to get my camera to take a few shots. They came out pretty good but considering they are always moving it's hard to get the shot you want. Especially with Super Macro.

While walking back to my condo I pass this huge bush at the foot of my steps swarming with bees. I have no problem with bees. I have never been stung before so I guess I have nothing to fear. I was getting in real close with the camera to get the macro shots. It was hard since, like the ants, they don't sit still, but I was able to get a few decent shots. At one point this woman was walking by and saw me. She said "Oh my god! Be careful! You are surrounded by bees." I glanced up from my camera to see that I indeed have bees buzzing all around me. It was actually pretty cool. I counted about 15 or so. But since I wasn't really bothering them I guess they didn't mind.
The pictures look a lot better when they are larger since you can see all the detail. Especially how fuzzy the bee is! I felt like petting him.

That's all for now. I got some Mafia to play on Facebook...

3 comments:

Michael Flux said...

I agree, as long as they don't sting your arse, there's nothing to fear!

And really, as long as they're collecting pollen, unless you're bothering them, they won't even look at you.

But about what you said about your photos being pale; to me it just looks like they were taken in a shade, as opposed to mine which were taken in direct sunlight.

Also when taking photos of fast moving things, keep in mind that the burst mode is your friend. If you take 5 photos instead of 1, then thats a a 5x higher chance that you'll get a good photo. For the good photos that I posted, I took a 170 within maybe half an hour.

Seantaku said...

Thanks for the advice. I'll have to try out that Burst Mode next time.

They were kind of in the shade if I remember correctly. At that time during the day the sun has already passed over the trees so I can only get so much light.

Alyson said...

That's awesome. I really like the bee picture.

I have a macro setting on my camera, but it doesn't come out as clear. I find it really only focuses the very center of the frame. I normally use it for taking pictures of food, though. I didn't try if for something this small... because I normally just hose ants down with water when I see them. Mean, right?

If I could take super clear pictures of super small things, I think my top three creatures would be (1) an ant carrying another ant atop it's back, (2) tadpole eggs and (3) Tarutarus.