Bee Good!

Say Hello To My Little Friend: The drone bee was an escapee from the hive "starter kits" that were being prepared for pickup at the Peninsula Feed Store in Redwood City. These kits were made available by the Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo Bee County, a group that helps bee keepers construct and care for hives of their own. These hives provide the environment with a natural pollination service, and their owner's friends and families with delicious honey. 

Members of the Beekeepers Guild were on hand to help with the distribution. The "kits" (the wood framed mesh enclosure containing one queen and a swarm of drones) were being unloaded in the back lot of the store. Each kit's exterior was then vacuumed to catch any drone bees that might have escaped. This fugitive drone was handed to me for inspection, along with assurances that drones had no stingers. I gently nudged him from my palm to the back of my hand, and he stayed there for several minutes while I photographed the tasks in progress.

Here you can see the kits being unloaded from the truck and stacked in a sheltered area in the back of the store. They are delivered in clusters of five kits, and must be separated into individual units with a power saw.

The kits are vacuumed to remove any drones who managed to escape the enclosures. While stingerless, drone bees would surely be a distraction if they started buzzing about once they were heading for home in an enclosed car. Most came prepared with mesh bags to keep the bees contained if they managed a bee breakout on the drive to their new home.

The distribution was scheduled for 11:00 am and would end in one hour. The new beekeepers came with paperwork in hand, ready to be verified by a Guild member and to receive their kits. As soon as all was deemed in order, they were free to take their bees.

Trying Something New: In an attempt to make the bees more recognizable, I operated my camera with my left hand and holding my flash in my right hand, aiming it directly at the bees in the lower right corner of the frame. You can see that the effect on the bees is minimal, but I managed to overexpose the tops of the frames. If called upon to make a similar shot in the future I will  grid or snoot the flash to get more light on the bees and less on the lids. I did not submit this image because I felt the skeptical man in the background might be a bit distracting.

This image was rejected because the beekeeper in the background was too small to help promote the bee pickup aspect of the event. It does highlight the preparation, but I wanted both aspects to be presented.

These caged queen bees were kept safe and warm in a belt pouch under the jacket of one of the Guild members. Up until now, I didn't think of my Fuji 10-24mm F 4.0 lens as capable of focusing this close, but this kind of foreground/background shot has lots of potential for establishing relevance in future photos.

The Guild Unmasked: I am grateful to the Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo County for working with me on this assignment. They were a lot of fun to work with. And if one of you reads this post, please turn a blind eye to any slight inaccuracies I may have unintentionally presented. 

The photo ran on Monday, April 15. See it here.

The Need For Ballast

The assignment was to submit a pre-event photograph to publicize a gardening workshop presented by the UC Master Gardeners of San Mateo and San Francisco Counties. The free event would emphasize "crops" that could be easily grown in a home garden. Strawberry seedlings were being prepared for sale during the upcoming workshop and sale which the Journal wanted to publicize.

The shot itself was pretty simple. I found a location where my seedlings and my subject would be lit from behind to prevent squinting. Next, I needed to include a tray full of seedlings to emphasize the quantity available for sale. The tables used to arrange the seedlings were somewhat narrow, so I had the gardeners position a bench alongside the table and fill it with more seedlings. Unfortunately, the bench was a few inches lower than the original table, so there is a visible gap which is visible if you know to look for it. 

Lighting: When working outdoors, I usually employ a shoot-through umbrella instead of a softbox. I find that the umbrella, when used with a 200 watt-second Godox AD200 gave me both the power and the portability to make the shot. It is a very portable setup, as the collapsed umbrella and the necessary umbrella hold take up very little space in my supplementary lighting bag. 

Timber! Unfortunately, there is one major drawback that pops up when shooting outdoors. It seems that the open umbrella is an effective sail, and on this day, a gust of wind sent my umbrella and flash crashing to the ground shortly after the initial portrait was made. This is not the first time this has happened, and consistent with past episodes, there were two outcomes. First, the umbrella acted as a parachute and softened the landing, sparing the flash a fate worse than death. Second, the umbrella's fragile framework would be damaged and subsequently unusable. Unfortunately for me, said victim was a Manfrotto tri-fold collapsible that when collapsed, was more compact than my favorite Zumbrella. Sad to say, I knew better, and had, In fact, a simple solution which I wrote about in this older post. This oversight cost me a rather cool umbrella, one which has been discontinued by the manufacturer.

Next came the group shot, which was achieved with a sly bit redirection on my part. One of the participants, perhaps one of the members felt s/he should be included in the photo. In a rare bit of diplomacy on my part, I said I would photograph my original subject and then make a shot of the entire group, which I would have done anyway. S/he was thus placated, so I set about getting the shot ready. Since the umbrella had already been damaged, the group shot was made with direct, unmodified flash. The flash was moved farther from the group, so I would have removed the umbrella anyway, since it reduces the light output considerably.

When photographing outdoors, it is important to remind one's subjects that the visors on the ballcaps might cast unwelcomed shadows. I always tell them that if they can  see the flash on the top of the light stand, their eyes will  be in shadow. Other than that, shots like this can be a piece of cake, or more fittingly, a bowl of strawberries.