I sat at the end of my 9-5 work day on Day 28 and pondered the beginning of my forthcoming time off. Year-end and year-start has been an insanely busy time for me as a Tier II IT Support Analyst. Lots of data to be looked at. (yeah that's a preposition) Lots of custom queries to run. Lots of horrible communication between colleagues, departments and/or clients. I'm thankful God blessed me with my position, but man it can be challenging mentally during the months of November through March. This time off is much needed.

Anyway, I sat on the porch with my camera in hand waiting for something to inspire me. I knew I needed to get in my #30DaysAnd30Photos shot before I dove into relaxing with single malt Scotch, so there was a little bit of pressure. Fortunately, inspiration was right in front of me.

My porch has shrubbery and stinky Dogwood trees in front of it. Totally fine with that, but shrubbery tends to bring pesky bugs buzzing around. In this instance, bees are abundant. Bees fascinate me with their mode of operation and biological makeup. I love watching them hover. I love watching them inadvertently pollinate. Slow motion video of bees are beautiful. So I decided to see if I could capture a tight shot of a bee in action. Using the 250mm kit lens, I adjusted aperture, shutter speed and ISO to get the best shot I could. Granted, the kit lens isn't the best glass one can get, but I'm of the mind of making the most of what I have. Here's one of the workers doing what he does best. I shot this while sitting roughly three feet away in a chair. Editing was done on my Chromebook2 using the Polarr, a free photo editor that offers built-in camera raw support. A "pro" version is also offered. Be sure to check them out. I cropped it slightly to give the image a better framing as the branches offered a great set up.

Thanks for checking out my photo. I have other bee shots captured, but haven't gone through them just yet for publishing. It wasn't an easy task trying to snap those speedy things in a tight zoom. It was fun trying, though.