I've been working with bee keeper Joe Zgurzynski from www.countrybarnfarm.com and Huong Bui of www.huongraphics.com on a field guide for bee keepers.  The field guide images and specs can be found at www.TheHiveSide.com.  This post is just a quick update on what I've been doing and to share some lovely bee images.  I love macro photography, and with that comes an almost necessary technique called focus stacking.  I've talked about this in previous posts so I won't go into it in this one. This image was focus stacked from 61 photos. This image was shot on a white background so it could be used as...

It's been a good while since I've made a post on here, but for good reason.  I've been bettering myself through the educational system at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh.  Currently going through a thesis course to create a book on what I'm passionate about, I'm creating images for an insect portrait book.  The images have been more than satisfactory and I'm thrilled to see the book come together and can't wait to see it finished. Also, recently I made a new addition to my gear.  It has nothing to do with macro...JUST KIDDING!  It's the Canon MPE-65, a dedicated macro lens that goes from...

While photographing some macro images of a friend's eye I came to realize the body does some amazing things without us having any awareness of it.  For starters, our eyes are made up of tiny fibers that pull and stretch as the pupil resizes itself based on how much light the eye is trying to take in.  Actually seeing this through the viewfinder put me in aw.  Check out the two images below.  See how the gap in the fibers contract and expand as the pupil shrinks and swells? Another thing that I captured were a few images that didn't focus on the texture or color of the eye and were "duds"...

When I began to really delve into macro photography I quickly realized that my depth of field had dwindled away to about the thickness of a few needles.  Obviously this was problematic so I did some research and discovered focus stacking.  Focus stacking is a method in which there are several images of different focus points that are added together to make an image that has more depth of field.  I like to relate it to a loaf of bread.  Imagine a loaf of bread being very small, or each image was shot at 1.4 aperture so the depth of field would equal one slice of bread.  If each image is equivalent...

Today I had some time to go through some of the insect photographs I took over the summer.  I had this image tagged as a potential for portfolio use but needed some editing as it was quite bright that day so some tweaking needed to be done before it was finished. These geen bees have a gorgeous metallic finish to them, but can also be very reflective causing some harsh highlights.  I've been asked countless times how I get so close to the insects when I photograph them.  In each situation it's different.  For this little guy I was part of the environment when he arrived.  Now that doesn't...

  Recently I was able to get into an abandoned factory and as you'd expect the scenery was extremely unique compared to the typical inner building feel.  Since I'd read about Lightroom 4.1 and higher being able to handle 32 bit tiff files I was eager to try putting together a few hdr files to see what I was able to do with them.  All I have to say is, AMAZING!  In this post I'd like to share how simple it is to assemble a 32 bit hdr file, giving you the most photorealistic hdr file I've yet to see and to top it off it's easier than before.   To start, select your bracketed exposures,...