bumble bee

Gathering Nectar in the Garden /  by Todd Henson

Gathering nectar in the garden

One year I visited a local park that was also home to a series of gardens. One garden had a nice range of flowers, which of course attract various insects. I found one flower that appeared a bit past its better days, missing some petals. And yet that didn’t stop the insects from visiting. So I stood by, camera in hand, and attempted to photograph what I could.

One particular subject was this bee. It kept moving all around the flower, gathering nectar and giving me different views. Though I would have preferred just a bit more depth of field, this shot ended up being my favorite. The focus is on the very top of the bee’s head, where the antennae are horizontal. And there’s a ring of focus around the bees abdomen. But otherwise, the majority of the photo is a blur of color.

I was hand-holding my camera, using a 50mm f/1.4 lens with the aperture set to f/4. Normally there’d be a bit more depth of field, but I had on an extension tube to let me get a little closer to the subject, which also has a side effect of reducing the depth of field.

There’s always room for improvement, and I might have tried some things differently if I were to do this again, but overall I’m pleased with how it turned out. What do you think? Anything you’d do differently?

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Buzzing for Milkweed /  by Todd Henson

Buzzing for Milkweed, a bumble bee flying beside milkweed flowers.

I love random walks through parks, camera in tow, looking for anything that catches my eye. I don’t go with any specific goal other than enjoying nature, but I’m completely open to anything that catches my eye. Sometimes that may be a nesting osprey with its young, a raccoon bedding down for a nap, a group of young red fox playing, or a bumble bee gathering pollen from a patch of milkweed.

We walked a trail along the edge of the bay, with water to the left and swampy land to the right. Occasionally we’d see and follow a monarch or zebra swallowtail butterfly, which eventually led us to a small patch of milkweed. There I found bumble bees gathering pollen from the flowers.

A bumble bee gathering pollen on milkweed.

Bumble bees are great subjects. They just don’t care about the presence of people. Some insects will fly off when you get too close. This is often the case for me with butterflies. But bumble bees just go about their business completely ignoring my presence.

I used my macro lens and I slowly moved in close to the milkweed and the bumble bee, trying to follow it the best I could. Often it’s best to pick a spot the bee seems to like, prefocus, and just wait for the bee to enter that spot. But sometimes I’ll also try following the bee. It’s not always successful, but it’s fun. On this day I was very pleased to capture the photos I did, my favorite of which shows the bumble bee in flight as it was approaching the flower, buzzing for milkweed.

Both of these photographs are available for purchase through my online store, run by Fine Art America / Pixels.

Fine Art Photography Prints by Todd Henson

Fine Art Photography Prints by Todd Henson

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Bee Sheltered in Rose of Sharon /  by Todd Henson

A bee sheltered in a Rose of Sharon flower.

This was such a fun photograph to create. There was a light drizzle, but not enough that I had to cover my camera. The light was very soft, but it was also somewhat dark from the camera’s perspective. I was out photographing flowers with my new Lensbaby Velvet 56 lens, trying different compositions and different aperture settings, just trying to get a feel for the lens.

When I made my way to the Rose of Sharon I found a bumble bee sheltered inside one of the flowers. It wasn’t at all upset by my presence, even as I pushed the front of the lens right into the flower, almost filling the entrance. This blocked most of the light that might have entered the flower and lit the bee, but as you can see the light did still reach the interior by shining through the petals.

I created a number of images of this bee, sometimes experimenting with composition, but sometimes just trying to get a shot with the bee in focus. The Lensbaby Velvet 56 is a fully manual lens and I don’t often focus manually, so I was essentially relearning how to do this. Thankfully, I did a reasonably good job capturing the bee in focus for this photograph, though parts of it are still out of focus. It might have been a good idea if I’d stopped down the aperture just a bit to capture a little more depth of field. You can see from the sides of the petals how shallow the depth of field is.

Because it was so dark I had boosted my ISO to 1250. The shutter speed for this image was 1/40 second and I was hand holding the camera. This lens doesn’t have VR so I did the best I could to hold it steady. It’s not a heavy or large lens so this wasn’t too difficult.

I don’t know the exact aperture I used as the Lensbaby Velvet 56 does not have electrical contacts so it can’t communicate the aperture to the camera. It was not wide open as that would have created a very soft focus effect. There’s a good chance this was closer to f/8, possibly even smaller. I was physically very close to the bee, likely approaching the minimum focusing distance of 5 inches, which contributed to the shallow depth of field. I really wanted to fill the frame with the bee and the enclosing petals of the Rose of Sharon.


Sheltered in a Rose of Sharon is available for purchase as wall art or on a variety of products.


See my first impression of the Lensbaby Velvet 56 for more examples of photographs created with this lens.

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