Lighting the Bee
One of my assignments last week was to photograph Taggart Siegel, a local documentary film director who recently finished his film “Queen of the Sun.” Taggart is most known for his film “The Real Dirt on Farmer John,” and his new film is premiering at the Hollywood Theater Sept. 17. I photographed Taggart with his daughter in their backyard bee keeping. Just your run of the mill photo of the two of them and their wood bee hive at their home near Mt. Tabor, nothing special. What was special where all the bees buzzing around pollinating the plants in Taggart’s garden. I decided to use this opportunity to photograph a detail shot of a bee in action. Photographing a bee isn’t easy, they’re small, fast, and don’t take direction very well.
To achieve the close focus I used a Canon Extension Tube EF 12 II on my 50mm f1.2 L lens. This allowed me to shoot within a few inches of the bees pollinating a flowering artichoke plant bursting with color. Then to give it a little extra pop, and give the bee a more modeled three dimensional look, I used a handheld Canon 430EX II flash off camera. I held the flash in my left hand out behind the bee at arms length. If you look, you can see the flash reflected in the bee’s eye. I just got my hands on the new PocketWizard MiniTT1 and TT5 system and boy does it rock. I can now fire my Canon strobes off camera using TTL (auto metering) and high-speed sync. If you don’t know what this is, don’t worry, but if you’re a camera nut like I am, this is a huge advancement in off camera flash.