The bees are back!

Please view LARGE - it's the only way to see the detail

Thank you all for so many comments on both yesterday's sunset pic and the bee I posted on Flickr. Interesting to see some of you guys couldn't choose between them.

As I liked the bee as well, and today was the second day of our PhotoShop workshop - I grabbed a few more bee shots in our afternoon tea break again.

Good job too - as this evening remained pretty overcast and breezy, so opportunities for good sunset shots were non-existent.

On the techy side, I used flash as the sole source of light on this shot, using a manual flashgun at 1/4 power - which allowed me an exposure of f25 - the flash duration being so short (about 1/3000th sec) meant that any movement of the bee was frozen, the aperture was small enough to give me some depth of field.

I used a cheap (£2.99 on Ebay) inflatable flash diffuser over the flash head to soften the light and prevent any harsh shadows; I prefer a softbox from above over a ringflash as it keeps the lens free so it can slip in between branches, and gives a very natural "top-light" (besides costing a fraction of the price of a ringflash).