REALLY Big Bumble Bee

[Julie Kenward]

Holy cow, this guy was a monster! I don't know if he was tired, full or near death but at the end of the ten minutes of sucking up all he could from this sunflower he dropped like a rock to the ground below and laid there for quite awhile. It sure made it easy to catch a few images of him, though!

Canon 40D, EF 70-200mm f/4L
f5.6 @ 1/200th, ISO 200
Manual mode, pattern metering, handheld, natural light, fill flash
I evened out the lighter areas a bit with a touch of green so they wouldn't be quite so harsh. Cropped, curves adjustment, desaturated the yellows a bit.

Don't forget to check out the 4th of July challenge at the top of the forum!

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Interesting composition. Liked the muted colours in the BG. The OOF objects in the BG on the right side does not seem to bother me but the one in lower-left surely does. The head of the bee looks soft on my monitor.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Jules,
The BG stuff does detract for me but mostly because the flower and bee are on the UR ROT area...I'm wanting more left....or as usual:D....I want it tighter! The contrast in these is huge.....so tough lighting as usual for them.

[Anita Bower]

Showing the entire sunflower (?) gives a good idea of the size of this bee. Wow. Wish the bee were sharper and there was less distraction in the BG.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I would suggest a tighter image to exclude some of the empty space on the right and perhaps a little more sharpening of the bumblebee

[Ken Childs]

I think the main reason for this shot is to show the size of this Godzilla bee and it succeeds there. The BG is definitely distracting. If it were mine, I probably would have cropped a lot tighter.