Thanks Guys!
There's alot of different styles of photography, but for real de-stressing, I find wandering out into a field with a MACRO lens is about as calming as it gets!
I agree. Can you describe how you took the bee shot? I tried doing this with little success. I set up a tripod near a flower and hoped the little buggers would land on it but when they did they were too quick to get a good snap.
Get rid of the tripod! That'll just limit your opportunities. Tripods are great for "golden hour" telephoto shots, but for insects and such, hand-held is a must. Also, shooting at mid-day is best since this allows you to increase your depth-of-field while keeping a fast shutter speed and don't by shy about getting right up to the flowering plant for quality shots. Bees don't mind you being there as long as you're not moving fast and not being percieved as a threat. Same goes for butterflies and the occasional hummingbird.
This shot was taken at 3:26 in the afternoon, the sun was over my back (best angle for getting highlights on thier wings eyes) and I was perhaps 10 inches from him. My camera (Pentax K100D) was set at f/8 for a nice DoF (just enough to allow for short/long focus since they're moving around on the flower) and the shutter speed was 1/350. I usually have my ISO at 200, so the shutter will be a little slower but the "noise" is almost nothing, you can always try a higher ISO
I might mention that the setting on my camera was "Aperature Priority", so the shutter will fire at whatever speed the camera thinks appropiate. Again, a higher ISO would see a faster shutter speed in this mode.
The photo here was cropped and reduced to 720x479 from it's original 3008x2000...if I only cropped the photo and left it un-resized, the bee would barely fit on your monitor