Bees

So I retired, and although I have an interesting part time job, my life stopped being shaped by the agendas of other people. All the stuff that kept me so busy for so many years was suddenly over. I suppose it could have been an unnerving experience, but it wasn't. I found my life not so much shapeless, as reshaped.

My family gives life much of its new form, but as the old life wafted down into nothingness, like a hot air balloon after someone turns the gas off, I've found two things whose importance, for how I now am in the world, grows by the day. One of these is meditation, with all it's attendant disciplines and theories and theologies. The other is taking photographs. Prayer and photography. Mostly these are aspects of the same thing.

Over the years I think I've developed a reasonable "eye". I know a good composition when I see one, just don't ask me to define it for you. I have a good understanding of photographic principles and equipment and practice. But as I spend more and more time looking through my viewfinder I know where I am lacking. Photography is like any art form when it comes to ratios of inspiration and perspiration. It's all well and good to point a camera at something pretty and push a button - anybody can do that. And it's quite possible to buy a technically advanced camera which does all the figuring out for you, so that if you set the thing to "auto", and the motordrive to "fast", and spray enough photos about the place you're bound, by the law of averages, to get something reasonable once in a while. But I know I need to, in fact I want to, work on the craft of photography. To be mindful about it. So I've given myself a project for 2019. This is a kind of apprenticeship piece for me: take a photo of a bee. A good one. Just one will do. I've chosen to do this precisely because it will be difficult and to achieve it I'll need to be diligent about the disciplines of my craft.

Bees are tricky little blighters to photograph. They move fast. They are small. Some of them are hairy, so they don't have nice sharp defining edges. Their faces are darkly coloured, so details don't resolve very well. They tend to hang around on flowers which are usually highly coloured and complicated, so bees don't often stand out well from their backgrounds. I've got a good camera and a fine lens ( a Micro Nikkor 105 mm F2.8). I want my shot to be technically perfect - well exposed and focused and free of noise. I want it to be a pleasing composition. I want my picture to be a deliberate effort, not just a lucky shot.

So I'm learning all over again about my camera's three different focusing systems, each with it's various options. I'm calling on all I know about the components of exposure: shutter speed, aperture and iso. I'm learning the prayerful skill of awareness: of myself; of the complicated piece of kit I'm looking through; of the flowers; the breeze; the strength and colour and direction of sunlight; the placement of shadows. And of the bees.

So far in 2019 I've had about 350 goes at it, and I think some of the ones I took today are better than those I took a week ago. Im hopeful I'll do it this year. I'll keep you informed of progress.

Technical bits and pieces: I'm setting the camera to manual mode, choosing a high shutter speed (today 1/4000 for the most part) and a moderately small aperture (f8 -10) and adjusting iso to achieve exposure. iso today ranged from 200 -2000, which is not a problem for my Nikon. I'm using continuous servo autofocus on the "group" setting.

Comments

Alden Smith said…

If you ever pass through the far north again I will take you to my sons small life style block. Among other things he now has two hives each with a plenitude of bees.

9 January 2019 at 22:07

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