Bumble bee feeding

Lord Vetinari

Some shots of a bumble bee feeding on a mauve azalea flower. Had dreadful trouble with the exposures with the flower parts overexposing and the bee underexposing but tried rescuing them as much as possible during RAW conversion and PP.

Brian v.

alexf

Very nice! I like #3 best.

PS: It is best to number pictures when posting more than three, for easier reference.

Wicked_Dark

Good rescues. I can see the 'tongue' is split which I never knew about bees.

paddler4

Very nice. I like the last best. Was it the red channel that was blown out? I have had that problem with red flowers a lot, and I recently read that the problem is that camera sensors are sensitive to IR that we can't see.

Lord Vetinari

Thanks for the comments

Paddler the main problem was the bee hanging under the flower with no background, even though I used negative FEC on the flash, the flash angle really lit up the top petal and flower parts so I had to set the exposure in RAW to -1 stop and then bring it back up with curves.
Yes I also get the same problem often with the red channel esp with flowers. Have found putting the picture style to neutral from standard in the RAW converter and sometimes with a little saturation reduction I can often control this.

Brian v.