I was invited to join a photo challenge and thought I would share my weekly entries here to give some context to other photographers or bee enthusiasts, or to the small subsection of the world that is made of bee-loving photographers.
The idea behind P52 is that all members of the challenge will contribute one photo every week for one year. My hope for P52 is to document a year of beekeeping one week at a time. This is also a good way to get familiar with my new smart phone and my point and shoot camera since I take both on my hive inspections. As I type this, I’m thinking about how to remove the stickiness from my camera body. I would love to make peace with the non-custom settings on my point and shoot. Example: I would love to change the focal length, but I can’t. I’m learning to deal with it by changing my composition.
I also want to have a more diverse bee portfolio — portraits, explanatories, scenics, scientific, etc. I just realized today while driving around that I can’t really pose bees or ask them to wait while I readjust things! I don’t want to be someone uses high volume as a strategy to get a good shoot. I want to be smart and considerate in my approach to this collection of photos.
About my camera and settings: I was using a Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital Elph. I used my macro setting, which works only when I’m at least 18″ away. I am used to having a macro setting and the subject about 4″ from my lens.
About this photo: I check my bees when I can during the winter, adding food when needed. I removed the outer cover and leaned it against the front entrance. Then I slid the inner cover enough to see that the hive had plenty of food. Three guard bees flew out to give me what-for — I shot the one that landed on the outer cover.