Hover fly in flight
Location: Filinvest Alabang, Muntinlupa Philippines
Date: January 1, 2008, 3:23 PM Manila time
Camera: Canon PowerShot A710 IS
Exposure: 0.017 sec
Aperture: 3.5
Modifications: Cropping, adjusted brightness, noise reduction
If you have visited my Flickr photostream, you may have noticed that usually my reply to comments is: "it's just a lucky shot" especially when it is about photos of insects in flight. I even referred to the photo above as 'my ultimate lucky shot', why? Because it really was. I took that photo while I was in the Philippines. It was the first day of the year and I was my nephew's baby sitter for the day. We were walking along Filinvest Avenue in Muntinlupa. Of course I was prepared to take photos. I hoped to find lady bugs, but I didn't find any. Then I noticed a bug in stationary flight! Oh joy, oh rapture! If I may borrow that line from Helga G. Pataki. I normally take more than 10 shots of my subjects but that time, I didn't have the chance to press the shutter more twice. Thanks to little Clarence John for scaring the bug with his hand. When I asked him why he scared it away, his response was: "it may bite me". A piece of advise: if you want to capture insects in flight, don't bring a kid along, it's for your own good. Fortunately one of the photos turned out okay and it's my most interesting photo to date.
Okay so I did it once, big deal, but can I manage a shot like that again? The geek in me analyzed the probability. Based on my experience, taking photos of bugs in the Philippines wasn't exactly a walk in the park. I think the warm climate is the culprit, it makes bugs hyperactive. The temperature during summer months here in Finland will never match the summers in the tropics. That means that insects here can't be as restless. In a addition to that, my nephew doesn't live here, so I though maybe I can capture bugs in flight again. It shouldn't be impossible. And besides taking photos of insects on flowers or leaves has become too easy for me. I wanted to challenge myself that's why not so long ago, I set a goal to capture bugs in flight, while they are around. I found out that it is not time-consuming because you will only have a few seconds to press the shutter. I considered that as a good thing because at least I was able to attend to other things in the backyard like weeding & watering the plants.
Here are some of my bugs in flight photos:
1. Ready or not, here I come!, 2. captured in flight, 3. Almost there, 4. Off to the next destination
"How did you do that?", some viewers asked. Well, I was prepared to capture those critters and grabbed the opportunity to fire a few shots at them while they were in midair. Based on Seneca's quote, I can consider it as luck. So if you want to take photos of flying insects, remember that you need patience, camera and luck :-)
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