Yellow mud dauber

[Nancy Bell]

I really enjoyed watching this wasp bring tiny balls of mud to create this rock solid shelter for its eggs. Once these shelters are dry you need a hammer to break them off from the house. This was fairly high up on my house and I could only balance the tripod on two legs with me on a wobbly picnic bench. It appeared that the mud-dauber used visual clues each time to re-find its mud nest and the addition of me/my camera/tripod confused it and it flew around and around searching. So each time I had to remove everything off the precarious perches I was using, wait for the wasp to land and then jump back into place, adjust everything, and hopefully get a focused wasp before it flew away. What dedication we photographers must have!

Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 100 f2.8 macro, tripod, 1/125, f5, ISO 2000, ETTL flash + 1/3.

[Randy Stout]

Nancy:

Yes, we do do some strange/silly things in the name of photography!

Very rich colors here. Nice use of flash. Bit more dof would have been nice, as always with macro.

Little bit of halo around the antenna. Flash?

Cheers

Randy

[Warren Spreng]

Nice, brave catch Nancy! I agree that a little more DOF would be nice but a fascinating image. I watch these gathering the mud down by my pond but I haven't caught them building yet!

[David Cowling]

A good bit of natural history photography. Very interesting to see the insect at work. Another vote for a bit more of the insect in focus, perhapse use f11-16 seeing that you were using flash and a tripod. You may of course of had very good reasons for not doing so.

[Allen Sparks]

Hi Nancy,
very interesting behavioral shot. Really neat to see the wasp at work here. Nice focus on the body of the wasp. Glad you took the effort to capture and share this image.
Allen

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nancy this was obviously a tricky shot but your effort was rewarded. If you could set things up so you could get more images I certainly would, a picture that tells a story is always better than a portrait. This is the sort of subject I have been looking for all summer.... I'll be over soon so put the kettle on!:bg3:

[Nancy Bell]

Thank you so much everyone! Yes, more DOF needed. I'll have to wait another season for these wasps. :S3: