Macro

A couple of weeks back I set myself the task of photographing a bumblebee in flight. This was not because I was particularly interested in bumblebees, but because the task was difficult. Bumblebees move quickly and erratically, they are hairy and thus have ill defined edges, they are striped which makes them contrasty and thus photographically challenging and their faces have black features on a black background, ditto. Good photography is about technique more than it is about gear, and I wanted to improve my technique. Especially, I wanted to try my hand at macrophotography, which I haven't done much of before.

So, I've spent a lot of time watching bumblebees through my viewfinder. I generally take a few shots, maybe 100 or so. Then I look at them on the camera's LCD screen and delete those with obvious and fatal flaws (bad focus and motion blur mostly)which is usually about 30% of them. Next I load them onto my computer and give them a second, more critical cull, deleting another 30% or so. I save the rest for working on later, readjust the camera and go outside for another few shots.

I've learned to anticipate what the bees are likely to do. They fly faster in warm weather than cold, and they have a different feeding technique for each different kind of flower. With fuschias, they crawl up the funnel of the flower, back out, then take off downwards. With lavender they begin feeding at the base of the flower, move upwards and take off from the top. They vary these routines according to the individual flower they are on, and thus, don't seem to be mindlessly executing pre-programmed flying algorithms, but rather to be adapting their behaviour to their environments. And I've noticed the old bees, whose wings are so ragged that often it seems half the wing surface is missing. They still manage to fly, but it must be hard work because instead of flying from one flower to the next they will, whenever possible, climb. This seems to me to require a measure of self awareness on the bee's part.

I don't know what consciousness is, and I have never met anybody who does. I have never read anybody who knows either, least of all those who confidently proclaim they do. For all that, I suspect consciousness is central to the meaning, purpose and probably the existence of the universe. And I think it is possessed by a far wider range of the denizens of the universe than the members of our species. I watch the bees, and see them making what look pretty much to me to be conscious decisions.

So thank you, little sisters, for all you've taught me lately. Soon I'll have what I want and I'll leave you to get on with your brief lives. Or maybe, if you don't mind, I might drop back from time to time, just to see what you are up to.

Photo Nikon D750, Micro Nikkor 105mm @ f16, 1/2000, Manual focus, iso 4000. Post processing in Lightroom. A very severe crop, and adjustments to clarity, exposure and saturation. My camera handles high iso very well and has excellent resolution, so I've been able to use both fast shutter speed and small aperture, but the picture is more grainy than I'd like. tomorrow I will be trying reducing shutter speed and widening the aperture. We'll see how we go.

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