Category: Up Close

being… with bees… and flies…

Raghu Rai suggested, “A photograph has picked up a fact of life, and that fact will live forever.” I’m not sure about the forever part. Yet an un-retouched photograph does seem to make a note of tiny factual fragments clipped out of the time and space continuum. But what do these facts mean? What was this large bee doing to or with the little bee? This was the third day that I witnessed this behavior. I’m not sure if they were the same two bees. Are they couple? Just friends? Mortal enemies? Working together on the job? I have no idea – all I have is these few “facts.”
Well what do you know? Or more correctly what do I know? Not much apparently. This large fellow is not a “Bumble Bee” but ’tis a “Robber Fly.” Live and learn on the “internet.” Oh – and only the poor little one is actually a “bee.”

(click photograph for larger view)


Leica R8/DMR, 100 mm Apo Macro Elmarit with 2 X Apo Extender

Before the thaw which preceded the DEEP freeze.

Very strange weather: For a week the temperature hovered around freezing; with just enough thawing to allow for these ice events to occur. Saturday the temperature approached 45 degrees F melting all but the thickest ice. On Sunday the temperature plummeted to below zero; with wind chills reaching -25 by early this morning.

(click photograph for larger view)

    “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
    ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Leica R8/DMR, 100 mm Apo Macro Elmarit