I usually try NOT to post similar looking pictures from the same shooting session but this one was hard to resist. Maya the Bee in a little more menacing pose.



"Bring it on, babe..."




=== For *Ex-po-zure's Advanced Photography 101===

How I usually do it.

I always have my camera with me wherever I go and I shoot everything I see. This time I was walking around waiting for my car to be serviced. I'm allergic to bee stings so I always keep far away from them. But as that day it was rather cool and overcast and the bunch of them was moving around really slow, I approached them cautiously.
I took one shot at the bee hanging to a flower and then I spotted this one sleeping. So I took two shots and without waiting for it to wake up moved in different direction.

Taking picture:

- Shooting Date/Time: Aug 23, 2007, 10:23:42 AM (not my usual time as I shoot around noon ), Outdoors
- Weather conditions: cool and overcast, no wind to speak off,
- Camera Model: Canon PowerShot G6, so called *advanced Point-And-Shoot*, with fixed lens, set to super macro mode,
- Lens: 7.2 - 28.8mm
- Focal Length: 17.6mm (maximum allowed in macro mode),
- Shooting Mode: Aperture-Priority AE,
- Aperture Value: 3.2 (my favorite for macro mode),
- Shutter Speed: 1/400
- ISO: 100 (higher than my usual as it was overcast),
- Light Metering Mode: Center Weighted Avg. (the only one I use in macro mode),
- AF Mode: Single AF,
- Image Quality: JPG Superfine 24 bit depth, sRGB Color Space,
- White Balance: Auto,
- Image Size: 2048x1536 px,
- No flash, no tripod, end of lens some 4 inches from bee's face.

Post processing:
_{(Everything applied to the whole image.)}

- Uploaded to computer into Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 for Windows,
- As I never work on original file the working copy was saved as PSD,
- Cropped to 1354x1016 pixels to keep the bee the center of attention,
- Input Levels adjusted for RGB to 12 / 0.97 / 255
- Hue/Saturation adjustments (Lightness only): Yellows (-7), Reds (-7), Greens (-5), Magentas (-11),
- Contrast adjustment: (+4),
- No noise reduction, no sharpening - I never use this kind of editing tools - just a little touch-up with Blur Tool set at 25% in the top left corner, where there is dark part of the flower,
- Resized to 900x675 px, added white frame in *Resize Canvas*, plus signature and watermark, saved as separate PSD finished file, then converted to JPG without compression,
- Total post processing time around 30 minutes, most of it spent on finding the best crop.



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The work contained in my gallery is Copyright ©2004-2007 IrenaN. All rights reserved. My work may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my written permission. My work does not belong to the public domain.</sub>