Photographing Insects

Recently my lovely wife had asked me how do photographers take those pictures of bees? I told her that I had done that and all it takes is a little patience. So here are some things to think about when taking pictures of insects. Depending on the insect it may be difficult. For example, flies and mosquitoes tend not to stay still for very long and it may be more difficult. However, if you capture these insects and put them in an aquarium, without food or water they tend to slow down. At that point you can use your shooting through glass technique and get those shots.

Bees on the other hand pretty much require just a bit of patience. When flowers are in bloom they tend to go from flower to flower to collect pollen. Once they land it is just a matter of taking the picture. A macro lens can be your best friend in these cases but I have used zoom lenses and cropped images also.

Here are a couple of pictures of a bee I took last year according to my image information. I was using a manual lens at the time on my Pentax DSLR. Even though I was in manual mode I still had time to get these pictures.

With my macro lens I would have been able to get a closer look at the bee but I was looking to capture the flower and the bee as shown above.

The next shot was pure luck I think. I saw this insect on the screen door of our kitchen and just happened to take several pictures from several angles. This picture is the one I like best.

In regards to this image there are a couple things I want to note. One, it looks like I am getting an expression from this little bugger like "What the heck you looking at?" Two, this is an example of not having set the depth of field properly. When I look at this picture I notice the tail end of the insect is out of focus. Had I manually set the aperture to a larger setting I may have had an image of the insect that was crisp from front to back. 

You can learn from my mistake, I know I have.

Your Tips are welcome, feel free to post it in the comment section below!

Enjoy Life, Take Pictures!

P.S. Added Zoom and cropped image.