That's a great capture! I know the feeling -- except that it happens for me with larger animals, like a horse in a beautiful mountain pasture setting that is posed just perfectly -- right up until just before the "click." Your north end of a southbound bee gives a lot better photo than my horse experience though! Good work!

... the same kinds of digital darkroom work that was done when using a chemical darkroom. Plus, there are the options of (1) starting with a RAW file taken in color when a B&W version is wanted, and (2) doing the final conversion to B&W from an infrared RAW file. ... and whatever else one might think of that works!

Had to smile! Those are great. Good work!

Oh yeah! Today here in Sandy it was great!

Thanks! I figure that photography should be a bit 'o fun whenever possible and it is good to be able to pass the enjoyment around when possible.

You can search the web and find the places for IR conversion and the different options available. If I remember correctly there might be an option that lets you select from more than one type of IR result as you use it.

Spring? ... This time of year one never knows for sure ...

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The hot part of Summer some years ago was when I first saw Yarrow and wasn't particularly impressed.  It was scruffy looking and had strange dull-ochre-colored ("flowers?"), just growing where any weed would.  Not the subject of a Van Gogh, or a Nikon/Canon/Sony/(fill in your favorite here) ... or so I first thought.

I've gained some respect for this tough little plant since -- It is independent (pops up wherever it feels like it and flourishes, thank you very much), is actually quite colorful with new bright yellow blooms in Springtime, doesn't need watering or any care at all -- even if it doesn't rain a single drop for months at a time, and provides a great photo background (that bright yellow, ya know) for some very interesting newly-hatched insects' portrait settings in Spring.  Gradually summer fades the yellow to shades of tan but the plants, and being tougher than they look, ride out the Winter snowstorms anyway -- better than I do.  ... if I could teach them to run a snow blower...

Anyhow, below are a couple of photos after a couple of fairly good snowstorms.

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Nice photo! Glad to see the barn & fence are being kept up.

Thanks! I grew up as a farmer myself and I'm also "retired and just tired" now after a couple of occupation turns in the fields of engineering & IT, so I have an extra measure of respect for your thumbs up! I appreciate it.

Thanks! It's good when photography can be a bit 'o fun ... and nice to be able to pass along the enjoyment!

I'd found a Nikon D90 body and had it converted to 720 nanometer infrared which is a very straightforward and basic wavelength. There are a lot of other conversion options available, either deeper into IR or ways of having color, e.g., blue skies, etc., in the results. I wanted to use it strictly for black and white. Some IR photo results can be very close to a "normal" B&W, and of course others can be very obviously IR because of things like green foliage depicted as white, etc.

720 nm conversion seems to include a very slight amount of the visible spectrum, at least it does on my setup. I find that very handy in the IR to B&W conversion process. Appearance of some of the photo's features can be varied by applying yellow and/or red software filters, e.g., during Photoshop's B&W filtering. Although I was told ahead of time that using a yellow filter on the camera would have no affect as it did with film, I tried it anyway. Sure enough, the fellow was right! There was no effect from doing that, just as the man said.

Some lenses are better than others for IR. One has to be careful with light entering the front of the lens in order to prevent haze or streaking across the photo. Some lenses also produce a hot spot or center exposures lighter than surrounding areas.

I don't have exposures totally figured out for the D90's IR yet either and have better luck with some subjects than others. More often than not its seems to work well to expose a little lighter than the meter requires and I'm not sure how much to trust the histogram and whether it is responding to the correct kind of light for IR. With experience I've been able to gain more consistency with those subjects that have an abundance of IR in the light source. The "Keepin' Cool" photo is one with more tricky lighting and so was a little harder to work with. In general it didn't need much more than a little dodging and burning as one would normally do in B&W printing. Some Curves adjustment was required to optimize various tone ranges. I've found that the range between black and white seems to be more compressed in an IR exposure than a color one, especially when the lighting is a bit tricky.

IR is very enjoyable to work with. I'm still on the learning curve and like seeing what it can do. Recommended to anyone with an interest in trying it. (p.s. a converted camera is a lot easier to use for IR than one of those "almost can't see through it" filters on a normal camera! Yep, I've tried that too ... works, but takes dedication!)

p.s. I found out that the D90 was a lot better camera than I'd thought it would be

This cool fellow was found relaxing on a bench in front of a house just down the street and around the corner. He had melted down some when I took the photo and a couple of days later he needed a knee replacement, but we are expecting materials for that to be shipped in by air tonight and tomorrow ...

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Very cool photos of one of my favorite critters! It has different colors from any I've seen so far around here, and there are several. I've watched quite tiny ones take down a butterfly that was a lot larger and then squabble over which one should benefit from it.

Yes, photographing insects in their natural habitat or activities can be really difficult, however selective focus can be just as valid in that discipline as in other areas of photography, i.e., not everything from frame corner to frame corner needs to be totally sharp and focus stacking is usually not workable for "insects in the wild!" Your first photo looks really good to me in terms of sharpness of the bee against the background. Good work!

The True Macro-Photography Forum here on UHH has several threads on flash solutions for these kinds of photos.