The Bee-Side

This is a bee in the rain at the sensory garden in Lanark.  The sensory garden, a project by Clydesdale Community Initiatives, is located next to Lanark Moor Racecourse just off the A73.  It's very pretty and (as the name suggests) explores the five senses in each section of the garden.  

Despite the rain my mum gamely came with me and I ended up taking around seventy photos between the garden and the loch park - I challenge you to take less - most of which could have been a lot better in nicer weather.

The bright flowers are in the visual part of the garden and were teeming with bees, which obviously made my day(!)  I hadn't used macro yet and I thought the colours were nice so that's why I took this photo.

In Windows Live Photo Gallery I cropped my mum out of the background and changed the contrast, colour temperature and brightness  to make the photo lighter and more defined.  The ISO speed was 400, the aperture was f/3.9 and the shutter speed was 1/110 second.  I used macro which really worked after three or four tries and I turned off the flash because the natural light seemed bright enough (and I didn't want to risk being stung).  

I really like how this came out but I wish I'd managed to make all of the flower as clear as it is in the foreground, even though I was practically shoving the camera in the bee's face (do bees have faces?  Google isn't very clear).