A flower fly flying near a flower.

Flower fly near flower

Sometimes you get more than you bargained for. 

That was my first thought after looking at this image I took today of a flower fly.  I had followed it for a minute or two, waiting for it to land.  I hot a shot or two of it here and there, but nothing which really struck my fancy.  Then it landed on the bud you see t the right.  Slowly, I closed in on the subject, being careful to make small adjustments in my position as I approached.  It landed on the flower; I corrected my focus and released the shutter.  At that moment the fly departed and reversed its position.  I thought I had lost it.

Originally, the fly was fully in the shot.  When it backed away from its perch my position hadn’t changed.  This resulted in my capturing only the front half of the insect.  Many flies are only capable of forward motion; flower flies can fly backward almost as well as they can forwards.  That was my first piece of good luck.  The second was that it flew backwards, perpendicular to my camera’s axis.  Depth of field is so very narrow at these magnifications that a millimeter this way or that would have put it out of focus.  As it was, it was still within the lens’ narrow focus range.

I altered the shot a bit by reducing the distance between the flower and fly.  I did this by selecting the zone and using a distortion command to shrink it horizontally but not vertically.  I moved the bud closer to the flower fly afterward and it all came together.  If I left it as it was there would have been a significant gap between the two and it would have lost some of its appeal.

I photographed this earlier today.  We are currently near Chehalis, Washington.  I have some other shots I will share with you all tomorrow, but today I thought you would like this.  In case you are wondering, I used an APS-C sensor camera with a 105 mm macro lens with a 38 mm extension tube.  I had a pair of macro ring flashes mounted on the front of the lens which is why I could shoot it at 1/250th with an aperture of f/32 and at an ISO of 100.   The macro lens was at full extension and I shot at a reproduction ratio approaching 2:1.

Thanks for reading.    www.ericspix.com

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