I took a few shots of bees buzzing around some flowers this summer on a trip to Virginia, and for some reason, haven’t posted them yet. Here are a couple photos that I thought turned out well.
My tips for taking photos of flying insects?
- Take lots and lots of pictures
- Use a smaller aperture, the insect will be more likely to be in focus
- With a smaller aperture, you’ll need to have strong daylight to keep your shutter speed down.
- Higher ISO can also help with shutter speed.
I didn’t take my own advice with these photos. It was early morning on a cloudy day, so the light was low. I don’t like shooting much higher than ISO 800 on my camera. These are set to 640… and my aperture was as wide as it could be at f/2.8.
But I did follow rule number one, and after deleting dozens of photos, here’s another one that turned out okay.
Congrats Lee. Nice pictures!
How did you succeed to capture this bee. Did you focus on flowers first or just point and shoot?
I know its very hard to focus a small bee. Its better to have small aperture but I think you get better DOF and better photos with big aperture.
Thanks for the post!
ps: I also brake my rules sometimes
There were a LOT of bees on these flowers. For most of my attempts, I put the camera on manual focus, set the lens, pointed at an area, and waited for a bee to fly through it.
I like to think that you need rules, so you know when you’re breaking them.
These are very pretty photos, Lee. Everyone takes pictures of flowers, and never the bees. These are unique and stunning.
Great photo! I love the way the background seems like fading!
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this pictue is very amazing one.. make fresh my eyes..
i have give you +
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Hi there Lee! I hope you got stung by the bees
Great shots! What do you call those flowers? They’re so pretty.
I’m not sure WHAT they are, sorry.
How cool! I’ve tried to take pictures of bees a few times on flowers, usually you can see the body of the bee but I’m a little scared to get TOO close. I’ll try to use your tips next time I take any insect pictures, good point about taking lots of pictures, too. It’s not like I can’t delete the ones that didn’t come out well, and if I take 20 I have a better chance of at least getting 1 or 2 shots as opposed to just taking 2 or 3 mediocre shots. Do you know what types of flowers those are? They’re stunning.
This is what I love about summer season! Achieving the right timing of photographing the flowers and of course, the bees!
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If you think that is only okay, you are a much better photographer than I… Very nice shot. For me, the key is always to take dozens of shots and one or two is likely to turn out.
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The photos are beautiful. The interesting thing is that you managed to capture the bees at the right time.
Congratulations on the excellent work!
Beautiful flowers reminds us the beauty of nature and the world we live in. The creator loves us so much that is why He gives us flowers in every seasons, Same as the reason why we offers flower to our beloved ones, to our wife, parents especially with our mother, with our girlfriends. It is a gesture of our love to them.
These both really did turn out well! Props to you, I’m not a photographer, but I’m willing to bet these bees were a difficult subject. You did an impressive job getting such small fast moving creatures so well in focus!