BUGS!!!

 

When I visited Ness Gardens recently I had hoped for lots of bright and beautiful flowers, but I was a little disappointed as there were fewer flowers on display that I had expected. So, as well as photographing the blooms that were there I took advantage of the good light and shot some bugs.

That being said I didn't always have quite the right camera settings and as these creatures are never in one place for long I was a bit worried that many of the images would be unusable. That would have been the case if I had not shot in RAW, but because I did I was able then to take advantage of the excellent Adobe denoise function to enhance the final image.

So love them or hate them these bugs are shown off to their best advantage.

The face of the bee in the first shot is obscured by its wings but I love the pose as its feet are outstretched as it comes in to land on the blue flower.

The ladybird was hunting for aphids on the leaves of an apple tree, you might need to zoom in on its face to see the detail.

Perhaps the hardest critter to photograph on the day was the water boatman, poised as I was over the edge of the pond desperately hoping I didn't fall in. Just as I thought I had the focus right the little bug would dive below the surface and I would have to start again. I know that in this shot the face is a little out of focus but the main body looks sharp and how surprised are you at the gorgeous colours that are revealed in this shot? Normally when you see these things scooting around on the surface of a pond they look so dull, well look again, they're brilliant.

I can't recall what the aphids were feeding on, possibly an embryonic apple, there were so many of them. These are probably my least favourite of all the bugs in this selection.

Which might come as a surprise when you look at the next image of a fly, especially as I suffered some very nasty bites from a horse fly that day. However I am really pleased with this shot and this one is definitely a result of some editing in Lightroom to improve the exposure and reduce the noise. I had the initial settings all wrong so all I got on the camera's LCD screen was a dark frame but with a little work I have revealed all the detail that was there.

The final shot of a damsel fly was a bit of luck too as they were so busy flying around it seemed most unlikely that I would see one at rest. Also if you look really closely a little way below its leg on the inside edge of the leaf there is a tiny (and I mean really tiny) little mite which would not have been visible to the naked eye.

Anyway, if you have read this far thank you for taking the time to not only look at the pics but also read a little about them. Why not leave a comment, perhaps say whether you have a favourite image from today's selection and what you like about it...