Busy bees - close-up photography trial with a telescopic lens

I'm not pro photographer, and my gear is not much more than the standard kit lenses, on a Canon EOS 600D DSLR. Still, you can pull off some reasonable photos—if you are prepared to trawl through dozens of rejects to find the jackpots. So it is with trying to do macro photography with bees using a 55–250mm telephoto lens...

But there's a little corner of our garden where the entire lot all flower at once at the same time of year—that time being now. This morning over a tranquil coffee on the deck, I noticed how loaded with pollen the hundreds of bees all were.

Now they aren't called busy bees without reason. There was no way I was going to be able to stage a nice still macro shot. It was more a case of stand back, zoom in, and do the best I could to keep the focus right.

85 shots later, none of them are perfectly focussed, but there were five I was happy with—even viewing full screen. The full pollen loads are clear, and there's some amazing detail of the opening stages of the crepe myrtle flowers as a bonus.





You can check the other few photos over on Flickr.