Now I know these are not any of the creatures from my garden! What exactly are they doing?
Are those first responders for a heart attack victim?
AFAIK, they are working on taking part of a Super-Sized
meal home to the family. Ants are hard working creatures able to lift up to 600 times their own mass IIRC. The victim was probably a beetle that got stepped by a human traversing the trail.
Sean, this is not my kind of fun. (Ewwww, said in my best Valley Girl intonation!) However, this might qualify for the new side by side challenge. Good photography, but, pardon me for not enjoying the subject. I think that I will stick to people, boats, pets and food of the human kind....
Thanks. <smile>
It took me a while to learn to enjoy watching insects, but once you learn to appreciate their alien beauty and grace they can be utterly fascinating.
Fascinating shots, did you kneel/lay on the ground to get these? must have been bright sunshine by the look of things. I particularly like the last one, could be a candidate for Asher's "Side by Side" challenge! Thanks for showing these I feel inspired to go out in my garden and have a look and see what I can find!
I was squatting on a trail. I in general do not kneel, but I do occasionally lie on the ground for mushroom shots when appropriately attired. Laying upon the ground in the middle of a group of ants is not my thing. Get in close to foraging bees (not near their homes which can be very unsafe) and they start landing on you and start treating you as part of the terrain is a major rush like summiting a mountain.
The light was mildly diffused direct sunlight (a major cloud bank was coming in and the leading edge provided some diffusion).
As for the garden, the secret there is to photograph the plants and to learn their shapes. Once you know the shapes of the plants, you then look for irregularities in them. Those irregularities are often insects. At distances of 1 m (3 ft) or more insects do not look like insects, but instead they are out of focus blobs. And sometimes irregularities are bits of plant matter, just a part of a dead insect, damage to a plant, or other flotsam and jetsam. But they are the place to look.
Do you have a macro lens? This is a nearly vital (close up lenses/dioptric correction lenses or a reversed lens can also be used) to shooting insects. Ants are a very tough subject due to their small size. Bees, wasps, beetles, flies, and etcetera are often larger and a bit easier to shoot but still need a macro shooting capability.
With this one, I could have gotten more DoF and a lower ISO using flash, but the light was fading and I chased it another 20 miles North before it faded at sunset to a different locale.
enjoy your day,
Sean
