Bee in flower

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scitch
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Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 12:35 am

Bee in flower

Post by scitch »

See if you can guess the technique for capturing this bee sticking its tongue out in a flower. It's pretty deep for a single shot. On the other hand, how could one stack a shot of a bee while it slurps nectar? The only thing I'll say is that it is only slightly cropped at the top and bottom, maybe 10% off at each end.

Image

Mike

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Dead bee, propped by its wings and tongue. Nicely done, though!

Might benefit from being just a bit brighter. There's nothing over 229 in the whole image.

--Rik

scitch
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Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 12:35 am

Post by scitch »

Wow, that took you what . . . 2 minutes? Nice job.

Here, Auto Tone brightened it up a little bit:

Image

I was disappointed in the lack of detail. Can't see the facets in the eye nor the ocelli. I tried to make a light box out of a white styrofoam packaging box and hoped the light would bounce around inside, but there were really bad shadows that I couldn't get rid of. I'll keep playing.

Mike

scitch
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Post by scitch »

BTW, what did you mean by "nothing over 229"?

Mike

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

"Nothing over 229" meant that when I pulled the image into Photoshop and looked at its histogram, there were no pixels with a value greater than 229 out of a possible 255. That means you're giving away 10% or so of your brightest values. That's not necessarily wrong, it just means there's an opportunity to lighten up even the areas that are already the lightest.

Regarding lighting, search the forum for NikonUser's various postings regarding white plastic foam cups. (They might be indexed as "styrofoam". I don't remember for sure.) He gets great mileage even from just a single flash, with a foam cup shaped and positioned so that the toward-light side of the subject gets lit by flash diffusing through the front side of the cup, and the away-from-light side of the subject gets lit by flash bouncing off the back side of the cup.

Sorry about figuring out your trick so fast. I just happened to be on the forum when you posted, and I've seen a few of these before -- including in front of my own camera. Check out this spider. :wink:

--Rik

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

rjlittlefield wrote:Dead bee, propped by its wings and tongue. Nicely done, though!
Tips:

Bees have their wings folded over their abdomen when feeding, rising slightly as the bee bends its head down to insert its tongue. They also have their legs extended.

That said, a nice result for what it is.

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

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