"The Bee Man"

Freckles V
Originally uploaded by Dalantech.

The title of this post is one of the things that I've been called this year, along with "The Bee Whisperer" and considering the number of bee photos I've taken this year I'm stunned no one has said "Dances with Bees" :D

It was really unintentional -I shoot whatever I have time for, and whatever will let me get close. I typically only have about 30 minutes a day, on average, to take photos. This year I missed about six weeks of the "macro season" between my son going into the hospital for an asthma attack (he's OK now) and my MT-24EX dieing. Sadly the flash went south during the height of the solitary bee emergence here, and I got the replacement three days after one of my best shooting locations was mowed. So I actually took fewer bee images than I could have, but still managed to fill my gallery with them. Go figure...

The only planned bee shoot that I did was toward the end of August. For three consecutive weekends I baited pumpkin flowers so I could photograph honeybees while they were feeding (like the one in the image I've used for this post). I had a few compositions stuck in my head from when I was shooting honeybees out at the farm two years ago and I wanted to see if I could get those images into the camera. Unfortunately I waited too long to track down a beekeeper to photograph honeybees on comb, but I've got that session on the list for next year.

This coming spring I plan to photograph more hoverflies, particularly Banded Eye Drones. But I really can't say what I'll definitely be able to photograph at any given time. I can say that I'm not really fixating on any one insect though, because I don't want my gallery to get repetitive and boring. It also isn't any fun for me to shoot the same critters all the time -and it needs to be fun...

I'm working on a new set of diffusers for my MT-24EX, so my light will be different in the coming year. Also I might just get my MPE-65mm macro lens back from the Canon Service Center -after almost two years of constant use it broke as well. What a year...