Native bee

I find these bees impossible to ID - I have seen several very similar but slightly different ones (about a third to a half of the size of a honey bee) and they could be leafcutter bees or black resin bees or something else entirely. Also spotted a tiny homalictus bee and a just as tiny reed bee (both about the size of small ants) I find these very hard to get a decent photo of - I'm not sure if it's inadequacies in me or the camera, or a bit of both.

I feel like every photo I take at the moment is complete rubbish and I might need a break from blip, but I really wanted to get to 365 before I become an occasional blipper. I'm bored of trying to find a photo in my garden every day and I can't just go off on photography trips, because I know I'm supposed to be renovating the house and that's what I should be concentrating on, not this blipping nonsense, which certainly won't help my divorce settlement at all! (rant rant). Maybe I need to not worry about attaining the magical 365 at all and just stop blipping for a while? My attempt to do that before wasn't very successful...