Flower n' Bee

by Annie Cheng
(Taiwan)

I was in a rose garden and happened to see a bee flying around a beautiful pink flower (not sure if it's a rose).

Then I took out a camera and randomly snapped a few shots of the scene. This one is closest to the bee. The photo is unedited in any way.

Thanks for the suggestions!


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Seems like a popular time of the year for photos of bees – we've had a few recently.

This one struck me when I first saw it, but not necessarily for all the right reasons!

The reason it struck me, was that I was a little confused if this was a picture of a flower, or a bee.

The thing is, the bee is quite small in the photo, and the flower takes up the majority of the photo – hence my initial confusion!

Knowing that it is a photo of the bee brings about one idea for an improvement – make the bee bigger!

I don't know what sort of camera Annie was using, but most cameras these days come with a 'macro' mode. Using this mode will allow the camera to focus much closer to the subject. The photographer can then get much closer to the bee too – making it fill the frame. And this is what I would have liked to see in Annie's photo.

I think this photo could be improved by cropping in closely on that bee, cutting out most of the petals. I think it is worth a go, and if Annie has any image editing software this would be easy to do. Click here for a digital photography tutorial on using the crop tool.

Other than that, the only other suggestion I would make would be to boost the colours a little using software. Annie says she hasn't altered the photo at all. Personally, I think a quick tweak of the 'contrast' settings, and sometimes the 'saturation' settings too, can really lift a photo. Don't go too far with these though, as too much can really spoil the photo.

Thanks Annie for the submission.

Ed.
UPDATED! Annie has since gone away and made some adjustments to her 'Flower and Bee'. The before and after photos can be seen here.

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