Photographer

Archer Shilling

Finalist in

Lower Secondary Category

Written Statement

Bees are a community and important to the fragile balance of our natural world. Bees are my chosen subject because I have a massive gum tree in my garden. It flowers this time every year and is full of bees buzzing and birds screeching as they feed on the nectar that it provides. A hive of bees will adapt and change to survive even though individual lives are lost – the hive will survive.

In the first two photos, I used perspective to show the fragility of the bees. The third photo of this series is the reason I chose bees as my subject. In this project, I took macro photos of bees using a Cannon 800D and a 70-300mm Tamron Tele-Macro lens. In the first two photographs, I used a large aperture to make a short depth of field while also allowing for a fast shutter speed to freeze the action. These photos are cropped to highlight the details of the subject. Shooting time is limited because bees were only feeding in the morning and late afternoon. The first two pictures show the vulnerability of bees and the third, a new hope for the hive.