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That is an amazing shot.
Even though I know some of the principles behind how they do it, I'm still always amazed at how they can capture this stuff so clearly that it looks frozen in time. It still feels like magic.
Digital definitely helps because you can just spam the hell out of the shutter. And I have no doubt that a shot like this has an obscene investment in equipment because I've seen the limitations of my own (still expensive for me, and realistically pretty decent) stuff. But the top end is something different.
Then on top of that equipment, you need some decent work into scouting locations where you can get close enough without scaring stuff away, you need to invest a bunch of time actually in those locations, with a reasonably high degree of focus, understand your camera and settings well enough to maximize the shot for the lighting, and react and get shots lined up in seconds a lot of the time.
Plus actually find a way to make a living on it or do it in your spare time between an actual job that pays the bills and for all your expensive gear. It's seriously impressive and there's a reason most people can't do it.
That last paragraph is probably the most impressive part of all to me! 😁
Yeah, I was going to just list the broad strokes of the actual skill/work required, but actually paying the bills while doing it seriously is just too much to easily ignore. There are some genuine ways to do stuff like that as a job or freelance, but not enough to support too many people. I'm guessing a good number need to rely on event photography to pay for their equipment, and I can tell you that's sure as hell not for me. (Unless I could be on a football sideline. But being a wedding photographer would be a nightmare for me.)
All my photography friends feel the same way about weddings. I imagine after a few people blaming you for ruining their special day for whatever crazy reason is going to kill your passion for something.
I really should look into some of the regulars I share to see if they have public gigs. There's been a few photos I wouldn't mind getting prints of, and I'd gladly share a link for them if it gets them some funding. If they do sell the photos I'd also be curious as to where since they'd probably have good articles to share as well.
I'm not anywhere near that level anyways. It's definitely a straight hobby for me, that I started with the idea of having shots for photogrammetry and other types of image processing and went down kind of a rabbit hole of just enjoying chasing birds (and bees, and butterflies), for the sake of the mechanical challenge. Getting from seeing something with your eyes to a balanced, focused shot is genuinely hard on its own. It would be cool to play with some of those $5k (or $50k) lenses, but one $500 lens every few years is way more in line with my budget.
But I'm not a huge fan of just being at crowded events drowning in people (again, sports are an exception, because the focus is the game), so the stress of needing to get a lot of really good shots and capture unique, irreplicable moments on top of that would definitely not be fun. And being customer service on top of that, another job I'd hate?
You seem to know what you want and you enjoy doing it, so I'd call that successful.
Do you share any of your pics online?
Another "I want to, but...". The places to realistically do that are basically sites like instagram that I see as actively malicious. I'll get to the point of just hosting myself on my own hardware to make visible to people who care, but definitely not promoting or anything. I just have a bad habit of stacking up too many other things to develop simultaneously, then doing none of them to read a book or play video games or do one of the different outdoor things I want to do instead.
But if you're curious I can throw a couple here. (And this post won't load for me after because my app can't parse multiple images in a post lol.
It only put up one with a pair of butterflies. I like it though. All the appendages stand out nicely and you see some details of the eyes. The one flying is also nice and clear looking.
I live near some water, and it would be cool to catch some of the dragonflies like this to get a nice look at them.
Edit: Now I see you broke them out. And you even had a dragonfly! I like that and that fuzzy little bee face too. I've been trying to post better attention to all the unique bee types we have as well.
I made it a chain of replies with one per post instead so my whole app doesn't crash every time I open it. One of the others actually is a dragonfly. Huge pain in the ass because of how fast they move, and because they're too small for my autofocus (that's also probably too slow). But really satisfying when you get a clean one (though I definitely had to massage that one in post).
I found ~f/10 with as fast a shutter as you can get away with is your best bet to get a clear shot with a decent chunk in focus. More open than that and the plane in focus is just too narrow for me to get anything.
