Front Stoop Macro Photography

I had most of the day off yesterday, and while the dog was doing her 'numbers', I opted to take some photos of the slowly wilting flowery plants in the front yard.  After first seeing the spiders and the bees, the next 400 exposures were a bit of a blur.... :) 

1:1(maximum magnification on the Tokina 100mm Macro) photography is difficult on a moving subject.  It is made even more difficult when you are leaning over in odd stances.   Your depth of field(the part of the image that is in focus) is razor thin at f2.8, almost unusable this close.  If you stop your aperture down to f10 or so, you have a few milimeters of focused area to work with.

I did not use my lens' focus for the bee pictures below, I set the lens to its closest possible focus point, and just moved the camera back and forth inch by inch to get the focus right.  Then, when I was done, I deleted about 300 some exposures:)




Most of the flowers here have started to get depressed and look like this.

 Once I noticed the spiders I knew I was gonna be photographing for a while..



A spider scurries into a flower



I have always thought that Yellowjackets looked awesome.  But these are a different kind that have a shiny green back and stripped bottom half.   They are sweet looking and the Tokina brings out the detail very well.