Sorry. I missed the insect challenge and I was jealous and had to give it a go. If anyone knows the type of fly this is I'd love to know. The plant is called fireweed I know and when it's all gone it marks the end of summer.
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Its a hoverfly of the Syphus genus (E.g. Syrphus ribesii) its impossible to tell the exact species from the photo, you'd need a better shot of the wing to be sure.
Its in Alaska, so perhaps there are only a couple of species recorded in that area, and you can get a good idea of species by eliminating all lookalikes from elsewhere.
Excellent composition, detail and color. The tonal range is weel done, too. About the only thing I'd change is to get a better view of the bee's face. ..But getting just this much is a real coup!
Interesting shot, great close-up, lovely colours and textures. I think that your intention was to have the subject centred, but the eye naturally wants to focus on the eyes first, so I feel that you should have placed the eyes in the centre of the frame. I'm sure NeatImage could have helped you remove a lot of the noise in your background. I could be wrong here, but it looks like you used a large radius in your sharpening. It's better to go for a radius < 0.5 and a sharpening amount of around 100. Score: 7
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