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.
Can you see the bristles on the honey bee’s hindmost leg? Bristles come in handing for pollen collection.
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.