Gary Dunnett, Chief Executive Office
Photographing wildlife, flora and landscapes always makes me happy, irrespective of whether I’m walking in an alpine wilderness, diving an offshore reef or strolling through a botanic garden. Despite enjoying the remote and spectacular, my favourite photography locations are those where I feel a deep connection. The places you visit again and again, where you slowly come to appreciate the occupants and their habits.
Best of all are the small places crammed with a diversity of life. There’s a single boulder off the heads of Botany Bay where I’ve happily spent an entire dive scanning for Nudibranchs, Pygmy Pipehorses, Seahorses and Anglerfish; tiny patches of heath swept through by hundreds of honeyeaters over a morning; and even the branch outside my home office where the local frogmouths bring the season’s youngsters to practice looking like sticks.
And most important of all, the lavender patch next to the letterbox.
So what’s so special about this highlight of the Sydney bioregion? I could talk about the myriad of spiders, praying mantises and beetles that call it home, but the real stars of the show are the native bees. And not just the familiar Blue Banded Bees, but a passing parade of tiny Stingless Bees, Cookie Cutter Bees, the aerodynamically implausible Fuzzy Bears, Spotted Cuckoo Bees and the stars of the show, Neon Cuckoo Bees.
The cuckoo bees act as the name implies, laying eggs into the chambers of other bees where their larvae will consume the original occupant and emerge as an adult the following spring. A reminder that invertebrates display just as many bizarre behaviours as larger and more familiar fauna.
Gruesome breeding biology aside, what makes the Neon Cuckoo Bees such great photographic subjects is their stunning good looks and leisurely approach to life. Whereas most of the native bees buzz around at an insane pace, the Neons will hover for ages in front of a flower, deftly extracting pollen and nectar before moving to the next flower. It makes the job of capturing focus a challenge rather than endless frustration.
When you watch the same spot, sooner or later you’ll capture something truly unexpected. A couple of times I’ve been lucky enough to see the Neon Cuckoo Bees going through their daily cleaning and grooming ritual.
One of the best moments I’ve ever captured with a camera was a Cuckoo Bee cleaning its proboscis. I had no idea of the intricacy and size of that apparatus. Not exactly the subject matter Cartier-Bresson anticipated when writing about ‘decisive moments’, but absolutely a case of freezing what are usually unseen moments.
We are so lucky that modern focusing systems, and the luxury of selecting good images from hundreds of dud shots, make it relatively easy to capture the decisive moments in nature. And best of all, that moment might just happen in the scruffy patch at the bottom of the garden.
Technical notes: The image was taken with a 90mm macro lens on a cropped sensor DSLR. Capturing focus is much easier with a modern mirrorless camera or DSLR than with a phone or compact camera- this really is a case where the right equipment makes all the difference. I’ve also had success using an extension tube on a 300 mm lens. This gives you a bit more working room (distance from the subject) while still focusing relatively close. I prefer to stick with natural sunlight as you get a lot of blown out highlights when using a flash. When they are still, I go with 1/250th of a second, when in flight it needs 1/2000th or faster to freeze the action.