Hovering Bee V3-858
Another remake of the Planting Fields Arboretum Hovering Bee.
Another remake of the Planting Fields Arboretum Hovering Bee.
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NIKON Z 6
Aperture f/5.6 ISO 100 Shutter 1/400 Focal Length 3000/10 
Oyster Bay, New York, US
Oct, 2020Views
1880
Likes
Awards
Action Award
Chatter Award
Top Shot Award 21
Spring 21 Award
People's Choice in Nature speaks Photo Challenge
Fall Award 2020
Peer Award
Superb Composition
Top Choice
Absolute Masterpiece
Magnificent Capture
Outstanding Creativity
Superior Skill
All Star
Top Ranks
Top 30 rank week 1
Top 30 rankTop 30 rank week 1
Top 20 rank
Top 30 rank
Categories
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Pjerry
December 25, 2020
I'm sorry. Your capture is not eligible for the November 2020 Collection challenge. It must be published in November 2020 (see timestamp!). Please post another capture that meets the rules.
Ultimate
Ultimate
Ultimate
StephanKravitz
December 27, 2020
I apologize, I am still learning my way around ViewBug. When I don't know what something means, I take a shot and see what happens. Now I know what (Month) (year) Collection is. Thank you.
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
The Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, Oyster Bay, New York, US. After entering the park off to the left is a 25 ft square walkway. There is a open roof on one side of the square with benches. There are plants inside the square and around the outside of the walkway. The picture was taken along the walkway under the roof.Time
I arrived at the covered area of the walkway around 12:35 PM and spotted the bee. My kit was all packed, I've been trying to get an acceptable bee photograph for decades with no success. Frantically I assembled my kit, got as close as I could from the correct angle, composed and started shooting. The meta data says the shot was taken at 12:40 PM. I shot as long as the bee was in my field of vision.Lighting
The sun was overhead and to the left of the composition. I angled so the sun did not cast any shadows and the subject had an evenly lit area with which I could get a good bokeh effect.Equipment
The picture was taken with a Nikon Z6, FTZ adapter, AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm 1:3.5-5.6 G lens, Arsenal Remote V1, iPhone 7 Plus running the Arsenal App and a Peak Design compact tripod.Inspiration
I've chased bees and butterflies for decades. I got hundreds of butterflies, but only a handful of bees, none of which I really liked. So when I saw the bee, I knew I had another chance to get a bee photograph. On this day, I got at least three images of this bee that I liked. However, even being as close as I could get, using my longest lens and a full frame image, the bee was a tiny portion of the image. I was shooting maximum resolution: RAW and JPG. As I shot the photos I was concerned how small the bee was in the image, but I could not do anything about it, so I shot what I could.Editing
Yes, I used Photoshop to make a number of changes. I took a 6048 x 4024 image and cropped it to a 600 x 400 image, roughly 16:10. Approximately 10% of each original dimension. I literally decimated the image. Yet, the quality of the original image was good enough to yield a decent cropped image. Next I masked the bee out to work on the background, I darkened it and increased the contrast, i did this for three different combinations and slept on it. I could not decide which I liked best. Then I lightened the bee and changed the contrast three times. This gave me six combinations. In the end, three of the combinations were posted and this was the one I finally went with. I finished the editing by sharpening the image and a small contrast change.In my camera bag
I normally have my Nikon Z6 II (I took advantage of the Nikon Z6 II trade-up offer), FTZ adapter, AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm 1:3.5-5.6 G lens, AF MICRO NIKKOR 60mm 1:2.8 D, NIKKOR Z 24-200mm 1:4-6.3 VR, Nikon SB910, Arsenal V1, iPhone 12 Pro Max, 2 different MAGMOD light modifiers, MAGMOD color lenses, MAGMOD flash adapter, Godox X1T, Godox X1R, 2 Lume Cube LC-V2, 67mm Variable ND filter, 67mm Circular Polarizer filter, 12 charged AA 2450 mAh rechargeable batteries, 2 EN-EL15c rechargeable batteries, Lens Pen, Liquid lens cleaner, microfiber cloth, 3 XQD Sony 120GB cards, 1 Sandisk CFexpress 128GB card, 1 Sony E 256GB SDXC II and a Peak Design compact tripod.Feedback
Find a bee. And I mean "a" bee. I would not mess with more than one bee at a time. This is the single most reason it has taken me decades to get my bee photo. I won't deal with more than one bee and it has to be in front of me. After that you have to consider the lighting and background. If all those factors are good, go for it. Shoot in RAW, low ISO, high resolution, don't compose to tight around the bee (you may have to follow its erratic movement and you do not want to lose the shot because you were to tight on the bee), Tripod if you can. Once the bee settles down near a flower, shoot image after image until the bee moves, you don't know what you will get till you look at the pictures later. If the bee is still in your area, reacquire the bee and repeat. To finish the capture, you will have to do the post-processing in your "style" to give it your "interpretation".
