“There is nothing quite so inviting as a good meal in a beautiful environment” – Ed Lehming

Sometimes, it’s what I don’t see that makes an image interesting, and provides me with a title. When I was out on Saturday, enjoying a few of the early Wake-Robins, I set up to make an image of this specimen. My process is generally the same: find a good angle, adjust for lighting and composition, carefully focus on the details that I want to highlight, and snap the shutter.

During this process, I tend to be very focused on the primary subject of my image and making sure it is sharply in focus. I do this by using my camera’s ‘live view’ feature, where I use the camera’s rear display to compose the shot. This allows me to zoom in on a small focal area to make sure it is in sharp focus. The advantage is that the images are extremely crisp and sharp, where I need them to be. The disadvantage is that this narrows may point of view, so I have to compose the image prior to zooming in. This means all sorts of things can happen within the frame that I can’t see while focusing, like a fly landing in preparation for a meal. These tiny flies are hard to see with the naked eye and I missed seeing it as I snapped the shutter. I did not notice the fly till I opened the image for editing today on my 24″ monitor.

For those interested, here’s how I set up for this shot:

The end result, like so many of these, is that it makes the image a lot more ‘realistic’. These flies are part of the natural environment and serve the important role of pollinating the flowers, so It’s actually quite nice to see them in the image. I would, of course, have prefered to have an image of the fly actually feeding, but that, I believe is a matter of timing that I can work on for future shots. So, the image transformed from an inviting shot of the flower to something more, real purpose of the flower itself, to invite insects to pollinate it and help it reproduce.

Nikon D800
Tamron SP AF 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 (272ENII)@90mm
1/100 sec, f/22, ISO 800