My daughter is soon to be launched on a musical tour of Spain, travelling with the Singing Strings Orchestra. I was clearing out the memory cards from her camera in preparation for the trip, when I came across a series of photos she had taken while I was photographing mason bees along the banks of the Saskatchewan river…
There are only a few images of me ‘at work’, so I thought I would share this one. I am using my standard configuration, consisting of the Nikon D80 with Tamron 90mm macro lens mounted on Kenko Pro 1.4x tele-extender, with the wireless Nikon R1 unit and 2 diffused flashes. This is the same exposed part of the riverbank that I discovered earlier that year (See ‘Dummkopf!). It was an unsuccessful attempt at photographing the bees as they came in to land - very fast, and hard to predict. It was this location that made me reconsider the usefulness of high-speed photo triggers.
That bamboo pole? That’s for poking at hornet’s nests steadying myself while shooting – very light and infinitely adjustable. It also has many other uses – holding back vegetation, fending off dogs and nosy children…and toasting marshmallows.
(Photo by Arwen Thysse, 22 July, 2010. Canon A620)
4 Comments
A nice “field action” shot!
That’s a serious bank for nesting aculeates! Great site.
Thanks All – hopefully I will manage to photograph them this year.
That bamboo stabilizer idea is brilliant! I think I’m going to steal that one.