Fly Dance

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What a beautiful Saturday, and I have a ton of chores ahead of me. Toss shirts in the washer, clean and vacuum the living room, polish the kitchen and bathroom... They say duty first, then fun. But what kind of life would it be if we only submitted to obligations? So I grabbed my camera and headed out. Chores can wait sometimes.

I didn't have a specific idea of what I'd be photographing. But I took a small, lightweight telephoto lens 50-200 mm and a macro lens with 2 diopters. What's this setup good for? Capturing tiny details, like insects. This subject is actually quite rewarding. Insects come in so many forms and shapes that you can photograph them over and over, and it's never the same.

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Outdoors, I followed my usual nature photography approach. I sat on a fallen log by the lake and waited to see what would show up. You can't really plan nature. It just sends something your way, and the photographer can either accept it or not.

This time, nature didn't send a colorful exotic butterfly or some dramatic animal, but a fly. An ordinary, plain old fly.

As I said, you can't be too picky outdoors. Mother Nature deals the cards, and you play with what you're given. When you get a fly, you can't photograph swans. You have to make do with that fly.

And the fly will reward you. Maybe by dancing.

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The photos reveal one characteristic of macro lens photography. It has a devilishly narrow depth of field, which in this case is just two or three millimeters. For example, in the following photo, the camera focused on the fly's body center, but the head is already out of focus. You can solve this by higher aperture number (which has other consequences, like longer exposure times requiring a tripod), you can solve it by software-combining a series of progressively focused shots (which is tricky with such a restless subject), or you can simply accept it and declare it an artistic intention.

So here's my model for today - a fly.

During my nature walk, I naturally took other photos, but that's a story for another time. Nature has an endless number of objects and motifs for us. And everything can be processed. Even the most ordinary fly.