There is another world when kneel close to a garden bed of Verbena, or move in close to the florettes of a Budliea; when you are close to the Verbena on a warm afternoon like Saturday, you can hear an almost continuous hum from the bees as they move speedily around the tiny flowers, never staying for even as long as a second, since the flowers themselves are far too small. But for the hoverflies and other tiny insects the flowers do offer an advantage to linger, but mostly on this afternoon, a full second was generous to me.
This is a small window in which to move in, focus, and fire, but at least shooting digitally, I can rid myself of my failures in fairly short order. The sun was in and out as if it were a strobe light, which meant a constant re-assessment of my ISO setting, but at least from my last session, I had concluded that setting the Auto correction for the ambient lighting to minus a stop and a third, and the on-camera flash to plus a stop was a good baseline from which to work. I did a fair amount of ‘chimping’ to keep abreast of how I was faring, and I was careful to ensure that the flash was not being shielded by intervening leaves.
I was determined to see whether I could get in ever closer so I could capture the activity of the insects be they butterflies, hoverflies or or a lone ladybird. In this way I was able to note that in the absence of any aphids, the ladybird was not averse to sneaking pollen from the tiny Verbena flowers for a change in diet.
No comments:
Post a Comment