I don’t usually shoot nature photos. When I got a last-minute assignment to shoot Montrose resident Susan Stone and the honeybee hive in her backyard, I was a little apprehensive about the potential sting operation.
Stone took me to the backyard where the bees were and showed little fear in moving close to the hive, telling me to move slowly. I followed her advice and got in closer. The bees were buzzing around, occasionally bumping into me. I got my shot of Stone next to the hive and started to look around for a detail shot of one of the bees.
I didn’t have a macro or close-up lens on me, so I took my 80-200 mm and zoomed it out to 200 mm, bumped my shutter speed up to 1/5000th of a second so I could get a very shallow depth of field and stop any motion from the bees. I stood very still (they are bees, after all) and waited, either for a cool shot or a painful sting. I got a cool shot.
