I found a number of these flies on a bank of yellow flowers next to a small stream.  I must admit that even after attempting to look it up, I have no idea what type of fly it is.  At first I thought it was a face fly, but according to what I read face flies are quite a bit bigger than this one.

I rather like this view of it.

Here you can clearly see that the fly is getting pollen all over it.

These photos were taken during my weekly photo shoot at some ponds next to the building where I work.  I was a bit reluctant that day to go out and shoot as I had a lot of work to do and had a lot of meetings that day, but I was quite glad that I did! (and yes I finished my work too)

Sometimes it is very nice to just force yourself to go out there and shoot.

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The following is an experiment I did with a different daisy shot in Photoshop.  Here’s the original shot with no post processing.

I strengthened the shadows on it, upped the contrast, and did some light leveling to get this shot.

I think I like the second take a bit better, though I’m not sure if it is too simple.  Ironically this would probably make a good stock picture, though it would likely be rejected because the microstock sites have far too many daisy shots already.  I think Iike the concept of the white daisy on a dark background, but I’m not sure I think it is executed best in this shot.  Perhaps I have some daisies in my garden that my poor gardening skills haven’t killed yet and I can play around with this a bit more.

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This is clearly only an average shot, but the main purpose was to play around with Photoshop and see how I could improve it.

I made the following changes.

1) Changed the contrast a bit to bring out the flower.

2) Darkened shadows to reduce the distraction of the leaves around it.

3) Created a mask around the flower and then used levels on the leaves to further weaken them.

4) Using the layer mask, I then used levels to bring out the purple in the flower a bit more.

5) Deleted the leaf in the upper right corner.

6) One of the major problems with this shot is the flower is old and faded.  I attempted to ‘fix it up’ a bit in Photoshop.

Here’s the resulting image.

This shot still isn’t an award winner.  I should have chosen a flower that was more fresh instead.  Still, I think I did improve over the original shot.

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This is a cranesbill flower, related to geraniums.  The interesting thing when taking this picture was I had the opportunity to use a rather shallow depth of field.  I kind of like the effect here.  One can still make out the leaves but the stem is not visible.  I could blur the leaves more in Photoshop, but I rather like the effect out of the camera.  I took this at f/5 – which I wouldn’t dare think of for most insects.

I tried a number of different shots of this one flower.  Here’s one where the flower is a bit smaller in the frame.

Here’s another viewpoint with two different shots.  The first was taken at f/11 while the second was taken at f/7.1.

In general I like the shallower depth of field shot more, but I wish I had used an even shallower depth of field.  Here are some other shots I took that day.  The second shot was actually taken with my MP-E 65.  It does a good job of getting closeup shots like this, but in general I think the 180L is the king when it comes to flower shots.  I just need to practice a bit more.

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I photographed what I believe to be three different types of bees that day.  All of them were gathering pollen and generally didn’t mind me.  Sometimes when one got rather close I would winch a bit but in general they didn’t seem very annoyed with me.  There were quite a few at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens and bees could be found on a wide variety of flowers.  Though I spent most of my time taking pictures on purple alliums, I liked the shots of one that I found on a triangular yellow flower a bit more.  Here is a shot of the flower, though I do not know what type it is.

I would generally start at 1x, and then slowly go down to 2x as needed.  I didn’t dare start out at the higher magnification as I was too worried that I would bump the bee.  In general, I find myself becoming a bit less terrified of these every time I take a picture.  Of course, I’m not sure I would try this with a hornet or one of the giant honeybees I saw in Asia.  The next shot is one Nelya liked a lot.

Here you can see the bee gathering pollen with its tongue.  I’m rather proud of these shots and find it interesting how sometimes photographs bring a bit more than a pretty picture.

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After satisfying the kids’ ant curiosity, I began to think about choosing better backgrounds for some of the insects.  As we have a number of flowers in bloom, I decided to try that out.  My first subject was an earwig that I found.

Unfortunately my first experiment didn’t work out at all.  As Nelya acutely observed, earwigs ‘freak out’ when you get near them.  Earwigs feel safe underneath something and definitely feel exposed out in the open.  Therefore the top of a flower was not the ideal place and it quickly wiggled away.  Eventually I gave up and let it go about its business.

I decided to try something easier and quickly settled on a rolled up pillbug that I found.  For a background, I chose a yellow primrose that looked large enough to hold it.

Admittedly, the shot isn’t very interesting.  Perhaps yellow was a poor choice, but more likely the case is a rolled up pillbug (also called a roly-poly) isn’t the most interesting subject.  I waited patiently and soon it unrolled and figured out where it was.

Again, I think this picture suffers from the fact that the subject isn’t that interesting.  A bit more interesting was what happened when the pillbug attempted to get down from the primrose.

I like this shot much better than those where it is on the primrose, showing sometimes the best shot isn’t the exact one you thought of.  I thought of trying to get more shots like this, but I figured I had annoyed the pill bug enough and let it go on its way.  They are rather common in the yard so I could have gotten another one, but I’m happy with the shot I got.

My next subject was a spider that I found behind a bag of dirt.  This type of spider is very common around our yard.  I think it is called a sac spider as the eye arrangement matches the books.  I found a nice purple and yellow primrose and set it on there.  Luckily, the spider was very patient that day for getting shots.

I’m not sure which shot I like better.  This one or one I got of it at an angle.

The angled shot follows the rule of thirds a bit better, though the purple part of the flower maybe takes a bit from the spider.  I showed both shots to Nelya and she said both were good shots, but don’t dare ever hang one on the wall.

Overall I think the experiment was successful, as these shots look a bit better than the standard spider shots I usually get.  Now if I can just find a nice looking crab spider I can really get a nice shot.

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