I’m so glad you commented about your photo. Not only was it a beautiful shot, but I’d never heard of Iguazu Falls before — which means that your response sent me off on a brief online self-education. Thanks so much!

Ah, I forgot to mention my favorite - I like Bee2, for the contrast between the bee, the blue on the right, and the green on the left.

The thumbnails here are resized, but the links are to crops from the originals. And yes, I’m using the standard issue lens — Nikkor 28-80mm. It’s not great for macros, or for telephotos either, for that matter. But I promised myself I’d master (as much as possible) the standard lens before sinking the mega $$ into more lenses.

And what the heck is that flower you linked to? Is that a passion vine, also? Wild! It doesn’t look like mine at all!

I know what you mean about those passion flowers. I took
this photo without realizing what kind of flower it was.

I thought you had sharpened #6 a bit. The wings were OK, but I think you may have overdone it a bit on the stamens and pistils. You might try it again on another copy of the original image (you don’t tweak original images, do you?) and try selective sharpening using a duplicate layer. Sharpen the top (duplicate) layer, set opacity to 100%, then “erase” the top layer to get the “selectively sharpened” effect.

~EdT.

Bee 6, btw, is my personal favorite. As you said, the stamen / pistils are in better focus, but it’s because the bee shifted slightly when the shot fired. Shutter was at 1/640 sec, so he didn’t go far, and he ended up looking transluscent — except for the wings. I sharpened a tad to get the veins in them, btw.

I put a couple other shots over on the betterphoto gallery, also. (link)  Two of them are macros of a Passion Vine blossom. They are (imho) the most alien of the flowers in my garden. That gallery, btw, has a comments function; hopefully, you’ll tell me if you see something I could improve (since nobody has said word one to me over there…)

Not sure what you mean, though, by “submit” to Stephanie. You mean in a comment with a link to the (cropped) photo?

Thanks again, Ed! Happy Easter to you, too. Stay warm!

~EdT.

Just kidding… Really, you are getting pretty good with that new toy. I love the detail on the wing in #4, but I also like the overall composition in #2 and #7. While #5 is OK, if you could have somehow stopped the wings (or at least slowed them down enough so that we could see wings) that would have been awesome. On #6, it appears that the stamens/pistils of the flowers are more in focus than the bee is, which makes for an interesting scene (but not one I would have done.)

Don’t know which one I like best — but then if I had come across a bee, I wouldn’t be getting near so up close and personal.

Too bee, or not too bee…

Happy Easter,
~EdT.