Bee Seeing You

This sorry wee wet soul was found on our back lawn last night, and I took a few shots of it as it crawled around the grass looking pretty knackered, then left it alone. When I looked out this morning I could still see it lying there and so brought it in to photograph a bit more.

When I started blipfoto I wasn't wanting to get into taking all sorts of technical and complicated shots. I didn't think this was the place, and didn't think I'd have the time but I've been really impressed with some of the close-up shots on here from the likes of EzHighway and others, so thought I'd post one today. I'm on holiday and (again) it was raining outside.

Purely by chance as I placed the bee on the sheet of paper, it rolled back and sat up as you see here, with a set of legs shielding its eyes as if it's looking off into the distance.

I used a really cheap (£12) set of Macro rings which are an inexpensive way of getting into Macro Photography but as the lens is not electronically connected to the camera there's no control over aperture. This means that the DOF at this size is miniscule and taking a picture like this doesn't give huge scope for pin-sharp focusing on a wide area. To get a round this I cheated a bit and took three different photos focused on different points around the head. Then, in Photoshop, I aligned the Layers, added a coupe of masks, and painted back in the bits that were sharpest. Obviously having a subject that can stay completely still as this ex-bee did makes it much easier. This technique will suffice until I can sneak in a dedicated macro lens purchase without my better half noticing (recommendations anyone?).

As a Postscript to this shot, as I was transferring the pictures off, the bee that had been sitting nearby suddently took a tumble, When I looked at it, I could see it's stinger moving in and out and this had pushed it over. Not sure if this was just a reflex but I felt pretty rotten about having poked and prodded the poor bugger for the last twenty minutes. Mind you, not as rotten as I felt after taking it outside to 'put it out of it's misery' :-(

For anybody wanting to see the full size version of this it's on this link