Sadly, one set of far less welcome insects were probably encouraged by the heat — midges! I am sure these also have a psychological effect of creating phantom itches for several hours after!
The challenge for me was to see how close I could come, so that I could observe and capture a record of their pollinating and cleaning activities, whilst trying to do a reasonable job of trying to take the shots with interesting and varied backgrounds, with differing colours and shapes. Since I consider these galleries to be a personal picture library, I often also include variations of framing from landscape and portrait formats as well as often placing the subject, such that there is suitable area left for placing of text or other images to be ,cut in, which may often seem like unnecessary duplication. Lastly, I like to ensure that a gallery of images fill the pages without blank thumbnail spaces. I am limited also in that the Lightroom templates I use do not allow for differing totals of images per page.
Moving in really close to these insects then taking sharp images requires a certain amount of perseverance and patience, and when you do not have the steadiest of hands, it is quite challenging; I hope that the images shown in this gallery convey just how fascinating these creatures are when viewed 'up close and personal'.
One last note; the sun was in and out, there was a gentle breeze occasionally interspersed with gusts, and my subjects work very fast, rarely settling for longer than a few seconds, very occasionally they would remain longer, but in the case of the butterflies, they would not help by keeping their wings open for long, or would choose a location where my flash was shielded by leaves, also they did not take into consideration that I might want a complimentary backdrop, so it was often vital for me to change ISO, Aperture, or in some instances the relationship between the ambient light and the flash exposure, so they kept me on my toes, and sometimes on my knees, and the camera becomes very heavy after waiting patiently for a bee or butterfly to come over the top of the florettes and into view.
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