Photographing Bees in Flight

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And you thought birds in flight were tough!

All the photographs in this article and in the following gallery were taken by Bruce Malcolm, and are used with his permission.

Photograph by Bruce Malcolm

One of the best parts of this job is getting to meet so many wonderful people from all across the globe. Bruce Malcolm is just such a friend. Even though he lives halfway around the planet, in Southeastern Australia’s inhospitable outback, our paths crossed and we became friends. Bruce is new to macro, but he is not new to photography, landing his first professional assignment before I was born. He has been taking pictures, for money, ever since. That is quite a career.

Photograph by Bruce Malcolm - My favorite of the lot

One thing that the two of us have in common is we both both use and love the same 90mm full frame macro lens from Tamron. The two key differences are that; 1) he slaps his on a Canon camera (Canon…. the name sounds familiar… they must be new) and 2) he knows how to use it.

Photograph by Bruce Malcolm

This is the Tamron G2 macro lens that we both use - it is a shorter focal length than many flying insect photographers might choose, but it works beautifully in skilled hands. The following is a n affiliate link and as an Amazon affiliate, I may make a small commission on qualified sales. Just so you know!

I’ll put some other links to the gear you might want to consider if flying bugs is something you want to try for. It is not the easiest macro subject, in fact, it may be the hardest. It takes a great deal of practice and requires that you develop a whole new set of skills.

Photograph by Bruce Malcolm

success requires not only practice and patience, but a ton of preparation. In this video bruce somehow crams a complete bee photography masterclass into a half an hour of pure wisdom. From the techniques for shooting blind, to setting up your multi-flash lighting, and when and how to entice your furry models with a drop of honey, Bruce covers it all.

The great man himself - photograph probably by Mrs. Malcolm

That’s Bruce, sitting by a bush in the bush. Confusing place, Australia. I am not going to take away any of Bruce’s thunder and there is literally nothing that I can add to his thorough and detailed step by step instructions for successful insects in flight photography, so instead I will let him tell you what he has learned during his year of bee photography. After you watch the video, don’t forget to check out all of his amazing images in the gallery below!

 

Here are a couple of the things Bruce and I use for this kind of macro photography:

As Bruce describes, this is a multi-flash technique that takes excellent coordination and a matching set of speedlights is as important as it is in the high magnification setting in the studio. You can’t go wrong with this setup:

 

Here are the rest of the images that Bruce shared with us in the video - some really fantastic photographs! All were taken by bruce and they are used here by permission of the photographer.

If you want to meet Bruce and ask him about this exciting branch of macro photography, you can find him over on Discord. If you aren’t already a member, why not become one now, just follow this link and I will see you over there!

Until next week, enjoy the pictures!