Wild bee

[Wayne Tabor]

Early one morning, I found this small bee(?) covered with dew on an interesting seed pod. I took this image with my 40D, 100 f2.8 Canon macro, f16 @ 1/2 sec. with mirror lock-up, tripod and self timer. No flash used. One of those times when getting up early was worth it.

Wayne

[Julie Kenward]

Welcome to the macro forum, Wayne. I wanted to make you aware of the top two posts on this forum - one is about the stats that you need to provide for a better critique and the other is how large of a post can be put up. This one is a little small, hence, harder to give you a good critique.

You did a pretty nice job on composition. How you got the bee to hold still for a 1/2 second shutter speed is beyond me, though! You were pretty lucky! When photographing insects it is usually best to go for a fast shutter speeds incase the bee moves any.

If you have access to Photoshop then I'd suggest cloning out the few lighter colored stripes that you can see in the background (BG). I'd also check your histogram on the whites - some of them appear to be close to being "hot."

If you have any questions, please let us know! Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hey Wayne, welcome to the forum! You've managed to capture a hoverfly, not a bee. Hoverflies mimic bees and wasps, but are just flies. Some of these guys even mimic specific species of bees and bumblebees, including all the colors and sometimes even flight behaviour. You can easily tell the difference: bees have four wings, while hoverflies only have two like regular flies.
Getting up early is the trick for photographing insects. They always need to warm up before they can get going and when you're early, you'll get away with long shutter speeds.
Some remarks about the perch: although it is an interesting seed pod, I do find it a bit distracting from the hoverfly. Also, the protruding stick at the top is just cut of by the frame.
Looks like you got pretty good detail on the fly, including the dew drops. Maybe post a little bigger next time, because it is a little hard to tell. I like how you positioned the fly in the frame.
Looking forward to more of these little fellows!