Honey Bee on Shephards Needle

Lately it's been really busy at work and between that and running 3 photo clubs and trying to get a wedding business started, I haven't had much time to go out shooting. Actually, I haven't had much time for anything.

One good thing is that I can always find subject matter in my own back yard. I spotted this Honey Bee hanging on for dear life trying to sip this nectar. They seem to prefer the nectar of yellow flowers. At least that's how it seems to me. I usually can find bees around yellow or white flowers with yellow stamen. It just might be my imagination, but that's the way I see it; and I've photographed lots of them.

I have to keep my distance when I'm photographing bees and most insects because I'm deathly allergic to their stings. Due to the allergy, I have to shoot them with a fairly long lens so I don't get too close. Sometimes, the lens has enough magnification to keep the photo full frame, rather than having to crop in to get close.

This one was shot at about 1:00 in the afternoon. Tricky light, most of the time, but it was pretty cloudy and I got lucky that I didn't have more of an exposure latitude problem. The settings used for this photo was a shutter speed of 1/1000 to stop movement at F5.6 to sufficiently blur the background at 0 eV (exposure compensation). I used an ISO of 400 to guarantee that I'd have a fast enough shutter speed with partial metering at 250mm with my 55-250mm lens. As it stands, I didn't have to crop it. I was lucky enough to be able to get a close enough focus by shooting at an angle from up above him.