Turn Down for What?!

Every year it's the same story; I think that "this is going to be the year" -it's gonna be better than the last and I'm going to shoot more. But every year the song remains the same and real life gets in the way of what's really just a hobby. Network engineering pays the rent and being the "gatekeeper to the small world" is charity work ;)

This year started off just like any other in that I was optimistic and passionate only to get curb stomped by the day job. Mason bees emerge in the early spring, during the first warming trend after the cold weather has passed. I really like photographing the little critters and this year I completely missed them. One of the first images that I posted this year was a Red Velvet Mite that I found on a flower growing in my back yard -it's all I had time to look for...

By the middle of the year I was getting pretty frustrated. I'm very passionate about macro photography and I'm just not ready to put the kit down and walk away. But at the same time I was feeling the need to do more -if my time with the camera was going to be limited then I wanted to make the most of it and get some of the compositions that had been stuck in my head into the machine. Not content with photographing a lethargic solitary bee, and adding yet one more still life shot to a gallery that's already stuffed with them, I put some honey on a sunflower leaf and shot this critter when it woke up and started feeding:

Likewise I could have shot this honeybee while it was feeding inside of a zucchini flower, but I've been there and done that. So instead I waited until it had stopped to clean some of the pollen off of itself and baited it into feeding on my finger:

So here I am getting ready for the new year and wanting to continue pushing myself to take images that are not only different than the norm, but to dial up the difficulty and really challenge myself. To shoot more outside of my comfort zone and continue to be passionate about one of the toughest photographic disciplines. I even set up a house for the Mason bees hoping that they nest in my yard.

Turn down for what?!...