Simple tips to improve your bee photography
Tip Four – Bee-yond Auto
It’s great having a phone in your pocket everywhere you go and most of the time pointing your phone and shooting is enough to get a good shot UNLESS it’s a tiny, fast moving subject. If that’s the case a DSLR makes things much easier but there’s still ways to do the same thing with your phone!
This little Lassioglossum urbanus is 4-5mm long. This was my first shot after getting a proper macro lens.
That’s an approximate scale… this flower is tiny and the bee is smaller still. I was so excited when I got this shot!
The luscious blue petals, the bright yellow pollen, the slight metallic sheen on the thorax. To this day, this is one of my absolute favourite shots.
So what do I mean by bee-yond auto. Well to get shots of tiny creatures with detail you have to either be very lucky or very in control of your camera.
If you have the resources you can try a DSLR but not everyone has the resources for this and you can get great shots on your phone. I have very few because I use my DSLR whenever possible and that’s enough challenge for me.
If you want to see examples of great phone shots, I recommend keeping an eye out for Suzanne Muzik’s shots on social media. She has an amazing garden full of bees and she uses her phone to get fantastic shots.
If you want more control of your phone camera find the “pro mode” which will allow you to manually focus, set your shutter speed, aperture and so on. I won’t specify any more than that because “pro mode” has a variety of features that may work differently on each model of phone.
That’s four out of five tips! Make sure you follow so that you don’t miss the final tip. Meanwhile, here’s a YouTube link to some more photography.
Jane Grows Garden Rooms 