General

Beetles are not the most popular insect to photograph because most people do not care for them.  I enjoy the color and design of the insect and they come in all sizes small and large.  Beetles are not hard to find and common in a area with a lot of green plants.  I found beetles tend to hide in darker areas, so I spend time looking for them.   Most of the ones I find have nice color, although there are others I pass over

Planning My Day

When I am ready to focus on beetle photography, the time of day is not important, but they seem to be more around when it is cooler. When I find one to photograph, I almost always used a tripod because these insects more slowly or not at all sometime.   Because they hide under a leaf or something, I usually must take my time to find the right spot to setup.

Post Processing

I do most of my post process in Adobe Lightroom Classic and the rest in Adobe Photoshop.  Since the ISO for insect photography tends to be high, I use some plugins to save time with the noise reduction, however the technology on how these plugins work today is amazing.  Cropping is an important consideration because the bee is the subject and with a large area around her you do not want any distractions that take the focus away from the subject.