bee

[Cheryl Flory]

Canon 40D
Tamron 90mm
1/200"
F13
ISO 800
EC +.33
saved at 82% quality level to fit BPN size guidelines

I have no idea what kind of bee this is, but it was cooperative and had larger than usual head/eyes, so I was able to get this image.

This is a very large crop since I did have the complete body in the frame. But I liked the focus on the the eye and the pollen grains, so I did the tight major crop.

The tip of the foreground leg on the left is blurred, and I wish I had gotten the pollen grains on the far antenna in focus.

So where do I go from here?

(I'm going to miss this lens. I let my daughter borrow it, and she fell in love with it, and uses it for portraits and her restaurant shooting. So I decided to "upgrade" to the 180mm lens. So far, I think I made a very wrong decision on that.)

[Ken Childs]

Hey Cheryl, your bee is really another hoverfly. :) I love these shots that show lots of pollen!

You already mentioned that you would have liked more DOF so going to f16 when shooting probably would have helped with that. Other than that, the only problem I see is that some areas of the flower are just a bit too bright and could stand to be toned down.

[Leon Robinson Jr.]

I like the close-up and anytime you can get pollen in the shot it works. I went from a canon 100 macro to the Tamron 180 and loved it. But I was shooting BFlies primarily and the working distance worked out GREAT!

[Jay Sheinfield]

looks great to me.............agree with kens comments on the toning down of the FG bright area.

[Chris Ober]

DOF looks ok to me, not a distraction and this is nice as is. Superb detail and I agree about bright spots in front.

[Layton E Parham]

Love the detail in the eye and the hairs. Buy your daughter a different lens!

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Nice image. It is a fly, I'd guess a flower fly. Where is Steve when you need him? ;):Dregards~Bill

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Cheryl. Very nice sharpness on the head of your fly and all the pollen grains are a plus. A few potential tweaks have been mentioned above. You also might consider some selective NR on the background and some of the darker OOF areas of the plant. :) This is another fly in the family Syrphidae. There are many species and they go by a variety of common names such as hover fly, flower fly, or syrphid fly. Most are very good mimics of bees or wasps. One way to tell which is which (without risking getting stung if you are wrong :( ) is to note the head shape and particularly the size and shape of the antennae. Most of the syrphid flies have short antennae like those in your photo whereas, bees and wasps typically have longer antennae as shown in William Maroldo's image of the red & black wasp posted several days ago. Once you figure this out, it's pretty easy to tell flies from bees and wasps - especially when you get close enough for a macro photo. Of course, the insect world is nothing if not complex. Once, I spotted a small, attractive yellow and black wasp that upon closer inspection turned out to be a moth! :)