Action Macro Photography - _TNY_3087
Every summer I spend a couple of weeks at my wife's mother's place outside Härnösand, Sweden, which is about 500 km to the north of where we live.
She has a huge garden so I always find lots of interesting stuff to shoot there, but my favourite bugs of all there is the European wool carder bees (Anthidium manicatum).
They are a bit unusual as the females (like this one) gather hairs from certain plants to line their nests with which has made the males set up a territory around suitable flowers and when females come there to harvest the hairs he mates with them. Other insects like bumblebees, hoverflies - and other males - are agressively chased away. This has led to the males being significantly larger than the females - something quite rare among bees.
Previously I have only found these arond the flowering house leeks and they have been quite chill tere, but this year we came up therea little early and the house leeks unfortunately hadn't started blossoming yet.
I was thus very happy when I found some lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina) where there were several of these bees buzzing around!
Here their movement was quite different though with the females flying from flower to flower, only stopping for two or three seconds before continuing to another flower which necessitated a quite different approach to shooting. Standing on my knees with the camera set I tried anticipating which flower she was going to next and as soon as she landed I lunged forward, trying to get her in focus and snap a shot before she took off.
Needless to say, this meant a huge bunch of wasted shots, but enough of them still came out alright, although it was quite exhausting to shoot like this in the heat (and with my knees on gravel).
I tip my hat if you have read this far - well done. Since I got a couple of shots of the male jumping on top of a female like this for some brief sexy time (he literally only lasted about four seconds), those will follow shortly (hopefully).
Action Macro Photography - _TNY_3087
Every summer I spend a couple of weeks at my wife's mother's place outside Härnösand, Sweden, which is about 500 km to the north of where we live.
She has a huge garden so I always find lots of interesting stuff to shoot there, but my favourite bugs of all there is the European wool carder bees (Anthidium manicatum).
They are a bit unusual as the females (like this one) gather hairs from certain plants to line their nests with which has made the males set up a territory around suitable flowers and when females come there to harvest the hairs he mates with them. Other insects like bumblebees, hoverflies - and other males - are agressively chased away. This has led to the males being significantly larger than the females - something quite rare among bees.
Previously I have only found these arond the flowering house leeks and they have been quite chill tere, but this year we came up therea little early and the house leeks unfortunately hadn't started blossoming yet.
I was thus very happy when I found some lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina) where there were several of these bees buzzing around!
Here their movement was quite different though with the females flying from flower to flower, only stopping for two or three seconds before continuing to another flower which necessitated a quite different approach to shooting. Standing on my knees with the camera set I tried anticipating which flower she was going to next and as soon as she landed I lunged forward, trying to get her in focus and snap a shot before she took off.
Needless to say, this meant a huge bunch of wasted shots, but enough of them still came out alright, although it was quite exhausting to shoot like this in the heat (and with my knees on gravel).
I tip my hat if you have read this far - well done. Since I got a couple of shots of the male jumping on top of a female like this for some brief sexy time (he literally only lasted about four seconds), those will follow shortly (hopefully).