I was looking for bees this day in October 22 and was focused on this bee when this butterfly came by as well. The bee did not care and in fact moved under the butterflies right wing a minute later.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
I was not sure about the OOF flower in the right edge, should that be removed?
Dean, it is always nice to get 2 for 1. Glad the bee didn’t mind the company.
I think maybe the yellows flower pedals are a bit bright (it looks like you were working in harsh light). The flowers on the right to me seems to frame the subjects. Maybe removing a bit of the brightness in it as well, but I don’t think if it were mine I would remove them. I like how you captured them facing each other like they are working out the rules of sharing.
Yeah, normally I would say it would be better to remove it but it seems to fit well in this image.
From an aesthetic standpoint, this image is lacking in the typical way because of the holes in the petals and tears in the wings but I’m sure it was a fun experience to witness it and fun to capture it
But, this image has a great story in my opinion and it’s obviously about the BF and the bee sharing the nectar and even better knowing that the bee just casually walked under the wing of the BF as if they are old pals (and they may be ).
And technically it would have been better to have shot this with a diffuser to soften the light from the sun but again, the story of the BF and the bee is stronger and somehow overcomes the technical deficiencies.
I see that your camera was set to aperture priority and your shutter speed was actually 1/1250s instead of 1/250s, this explains why the ISO was so high in bright light.
Try setting your camera to manual mode, try around 1/250s and set your ISO to auto, then on shots in bright light like this without a diffuser, lower the exposure value by -.7 or -1 EV, this will help to keep it from looking too bright, especially on whites and yellows.
Thank you for the feedback, @Shirley_Freeman and @Merv. Maybe Mervin has the right idea with setting auto ISO and letting that keep the balance on the light. I have had trouble with that a little bit in the past with the ISO getting too high as the subject jumps around to darker areas. The camera has a Fv mode now which I have not used, but it kind of acts like manual mode. I was out today using the bracketing exposure mode which is quick and easy to do. The best thing to do is wait for a bright cloudy day. I will be out again tomorrow at the desert museum.
I thought the butterfly and bee being head to head was very interesting. However, I have learned that bees really focus on the flower and I have gotten inches away from them with my camera. I do wear darker clothes when around bees.
Yes, I like the auto ISO and use it a lot when not using a flash. Then I just deal with the settings I want, and use the EV adjustment as needed in bright or dark situations. I have a tendency to get stuck in modes though, and I know there are times where one method can work great but may not be the best for another situation. I think the R5 has the FV on it too, but I haven’t tried it, I just set everything to manual except ISO. I may ought to try that whenever I get to shoot again. I haven’t clicked the shutter this year! I hope you get to go out and have fun shooting today, and good subjects pose in just the right places.
I use Auto ISO in a couple of my handheld custom modes, but I use a limiter. Does Canon have that capability? That way you can tell it not to go above a certain number. I also limit how low of a shutter speed I’m comfortable handholding. The combination works pretty well.
Canon does have that and the R7 and R6m2 seem to do just fine with ISO 12800 so I may try that. One reason I do not like auto ISO is there is not a way to under or overexpose say 1 stop. The auto ISO keeps that from happening. However, I can just go back to Av mode when I know that is needed. Thanks for the feedback on this subject everyone.
Dean, I don’t have the two Canon bodies that you have, but I think their settings would be about the same. When I use auto ISO I then can change the EV setting to plus or minus as needed. That way I can under or overexpose by a stop, part of a stop, or however many I want. And to answer @Kris_Smith question, the R5 at least has in it’s menu a setting for limiting how high you want to allow the ISO to go so you can shoot without worrying about it getting so noisy you can’t use the image later. I hope that helps. It is always a learning curve when I get a new camera.
I will for sure look at this, Shirley. Now that I understand more how bees behave when photographing them, I can spend more time with lighting and exposure settings more. I am done with another photo I did yesterday and worked on setting the exposure down from the white flower.
