I'm told by a mutual friend that he used the money he got from the sale of this land and the money he got from fracking to buy a bigger better farm elsewhere. I hope he is happy. I miss him and his animals. The good news is that all this land adjoins my property and no one is using it. I'm free to hike it anytime I care to as it returns to nature. I hiked it this Spring looking for morel mushrooms. I did not find any but there is meandering stream leading to a small pond and a beautiful hidden shady hill side. I'll return with my camera.

I looked at the meta data. The photo was taken October 13th, 2011. Yep, Fall.

Thank you everyone for the positive feedback. Glad you liked it.

I took this photo standing on my property looking over a fence at the farm next door. Sadly the farm has been abandoned. The farmer struck it rich when "Fracking gas" was discovered on the land. The farmer sold the property to a trucking company that only uses the frontage next to a highway. All of the rest of this land is returning to nature. The weeds are over six feet high. I miss that old farmer and his animals.

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Thank you everyone for looking and remarking.

Thank you for taking time to download for a closer look. I took the image into Photoshop and selected just the Bee for extra sharpening, the bee suffered from motion blur that needed correcting.

When I was setting up my gear the bees buzzed around me and the camera to check things out. When they saw it was just old Sony gear they seemed unimpressed. Now may if I had CANON gear they would have shown more respect.

I got closer, used a tripod, and radio remote control shutter switch. In fact after I got it set up I entered the air conditioned house and sat on the arm of my couch looking at the flower out a window. When a bee showed up I took a rapid fire sequence of shots.

The hardest thing was deciding which one to share with you. Here is the one I picked.

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My next plan. The best photo is the next one you are going to take.

Thank you, but the bees are blurry. I'm gonna try again.



I'm gonna take your advice. I'm gonna set the camera on a tripod with a radio remote trigger. Next time I'm going to use manual focus on the best part of the flower and just wait. I might even use some fill flash.



Thank you.

The darn bees would not stand still.

I have seen some hummingbirds check out the flowers. Bee Balm seems like a good hardy plant that keeps coming back every year.

Thank you for looking.

I planted some Bee Balm plants last year. They bloomed this year and the bees showed up. I chased them around the flowers with a 100mm macro lens and this the best photo I got so far. What do you think?

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I think I'm discovering that the lens distortion correction has already been applied. The people on the sides are really that big. I can introduce some distortion to make the lady in black, on the left the look thinner but then her face looks too thin.

I fear "it is what it is." I do not want to distort her. I did once deliberately distort the brides figure at the request of the grooms mother. Using the liquify tool I shrunk the bride's tummy and enlarged her breasts to give he a more balanced look. It was indictable and the bride loved the photo. I never told them what I did. Since then she has had a baby and can look back at that photo and think that giving birth changed her shape. Somehow I do not think that it's a moral thing to do. I will not do that again.