Sometimes when I head outside to do nature photography, a few nice shots quickly present themselves to me.  Other times, I am outside for hours and the subjects are not cooperating or I just can’t find anything that catches my eye.  3 hours had gone by after lugging around 2 cameras in a local meadow today and it looked like it was time to throw in the towel.  Low and behold, a charismatic insect in a charismatic setting was found while returning to my car.

Asian Lady Beetle atop a white blossom (probably Queen Anne’s Lace).

The above photo was taken with the Tamron SP 90mm VC Macro Lens and a Canon EOS 7D.  It is generally my preference to shoot from a tripod but when your subject is blowing from a breeze I find that a tripod can actually become an obstacle to getting the capture.  The sky had clouded over at this point in the day so I switched the exposure to full manual controls to ensure a proper bright image.  At ISO 400, which I consider my upper threshold for daytime macro shooting, I was still limited to a low shutter speed. 

Choosing a fairly large aperture of F/3.2 allowed more light to hit the camera’s sensor and provided a “dreamy” rendition of the white blossoms.  Composition-wise I thought that executing a vertical photo would create a more dynamic picture and the Beetle is in pretty good compliance with the Rule of Thirds.  I did have to shoot at least a dozen frames with the VC (Vibration Compensation) on.  1/100 of a second is not a very fast shutter speed to freeze a small fragile plant swaying in the breeze and increasing the ISO would degrade the image quality too much for my liking.  Nature photography does take a good deal of tenacity and perseverance in my opinion, but a few sharp shots a day keeps the grumpy Dave’s away.