Thursday, May 15, 2008

Macro View

Out in the garden this week, attempting to capture the close-up view. I noticed this large bee on one of my pincushion flowers.
After many many attempts I got this picture using macro zoom! I'm so thrilled to have captured a bee with no blurriness. Usually they are always in motion and hard to get a still of without a special shutter on your camera. But this particular bee was resting, punch-drunk on the pollen. Or tired. Shortly after this photo, the bee plopped off down into the grass. He righted himself but just kind of sat there. So maybe it wasn't such an achievement after all. But I still like the picture a great deal. Click to see it larger if you want to.The iris patch is taking off, bursting out with a lot of blooms. The jasmine is exuberant as usual. I had to pull it off of several adjoining plants and trees, as well as the second story deck where it was attempting to strangle one of my rose bushes. That stuff is relentless, but it sure smells good.
A closer view of an iris. These pictures were hard to get as there was a bit of a breeze and these long-stemmed irises were waving about. I like the hard edge of the iris' shadow on itself.
If you click on this photo you can see the beard really closely, it reminds me of a sea urchin! The beard gives pollinators something to hold onto as they climb down into the flower for the pollen.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great bee picture, Julie! And bearded iris is my very favorite flower scent of all time -- haven't found a perfume yet that really captures it! I'll have to plant some here for next spring.