Bee Butt

[Danny J Brown]

Hello Macro and Flora Imagers: My friend Mike Fuhr urged me to venture from avian and wildlife to post a few images in his favorite, Macro and Flora. I decided to post a little image that is short on technical proficiency and long on whimsy - a carpenter bee about to light on a coneflower. I took the photo with my little Nikon D50 and a kit lens which I traded away, somewhat reluctantly, a while back. I hope you enjoy it a little. Thank you.

Nikon D50; 55 -200 @ 200; 1/500; F/5.6; Manfrotto 055XB w/488RC2 (JPEG Capture)

[Dan Brown]

Nice capture Danny! Thats a tough one to get! I see noise in the bg, which you could fix. I think this image is worth optimizing!

[Danny J Brown]

Hi Danny: I have to admit I'm a bit lazy on PP for challenged photos such as this. Also, I just use DPP and Lightroom II. How would I go about that in LR II since I can't really separate the background from the bee? I tried the noise control with the masking feature but I didn't apply it very strongly. I'm hoping that somebody like you or Mita gets a hold of it and spruces it up (smile). Thanks.

[Dan Brown]

Hey Danny, a challenge! Here's my go at it! In the repost, using PS CS3, I produced a duplicate layer, then I selected the bee with the quick select tool, produced a "layer via copy" which cut the bee only to a seperate layer. Then I ran Noise Ninja twice on the first duplicate layer, flattened and posted. The big trick is making an accurate selection of the bee, the rest is easy. I used "quick mask" to refine the selection that the quick select tool produced. I think that you can do pretty much the same things with LR2 but I'm not sure and I don't know how to myself! Of course, all of these things will work much better with the original (preferrably raw) file.

[Danny J Brown]

Danny: That is looking sweeeeeetttt!!! I didn't want to ask you to do it but I was hoping you would. That little B is popping now and the bokeh is buttery - the way I like it. Too bad I don't have a RAW file of this one but I really don't think you could have done much better. Its one of the only original JPEG captures I have left from that little D50. Hey, if it makes "photo of the week" we'll share the credit (big smile).

[Dan Brown]

You are welcome Sir! :)

[Mike Fuhr]

Still one of my favorites, Danny. Nice timing!

[Julie Kenward]

Okay, you made me giggle with the thumbnail and the title. I had to look twice to make sure it didn't say Bee BALM.

If this were mine, I'd turn to a pano crop and lose half of the lower part of the frame - letting the bee take up a more prominent place in the frame.

[Danny J Brown]

Hi Julie: I was just checking my email and got your message. Funny you mentioned that crop because the image was featured on the back cover of the 2009 Missouri Natural Events Calendar and that is just how they cropped it. Good call and thanks for the comment.