i took these photographs of the bee and the very small insects today on the firetrail ..
the insects, which looked a bit like miniature robberflies, were very very small, about 2mm or 1/8" .. they might be hoverflies .. not sure .. they are that size in relation to the bee ..
i've combined the photograph of the bee and the small insects .. one of the insects i duplicated and flipped horizontally ..
this is the workflow .. and the three original photographs i used ..
the bee ..
and the small insects ..
1/1250sec & f2.8 + external flash
1/640sec & f3.2 + external flash
i could see the details of the little insects when i scaled them up a lot .. when one of them landed it appeared to be eating from a flower, a bit like a bee, but it may'v been eating some incredibly small insect .. amazing stuff .. :)
after michelle aliqui's comment ...
all these photographs were taken on manual focus ..
when using auto focus the camera will often focus on the background rather than on what you want to focus on, in this case the small insects which were moving fast .. using the speedlite 580EXII external flash helps a lot .. i can up the shutter speed which you cant do with the camera flash, the fastest it will go is 1/250th sec .. thats for the 40D .. i dont know for other cameras..
also i wanted a shallow depth of field for around the bee .. with a smaller aperture diameter i might'v got those very small insects better ..
Roz, you are a PS magician! Every time I look at one of your image (and read your comment) I learn one new thing. This is an incredible image - just awesome!
You just can't leave those bees alone, can you? Always poking your big lens in there little domain! (My tongue is in my cheek.) Again. . . super presentation. And thanks for sharing the process.
I love how you got the bee head on- mine always come out rear 1st- HAH.
Beautiful work - thanks for the steps- I love the rosy colors and dreamy look :)
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