This is a flash photo of a lightning bug taken on a strawberry leaf at ground level in late evening. I wasn’t aware that the other winged insect was in the shot until after I brought the photo into Adobe Lightroom to have a closer look.
Many of the insect and plant photos I take contain some kind of surprise. I often wonder how many surprises I never discover in the photos I discard or ones I simply never look very closely at.
I’m reluctant to take flash photos of any of my insect or plant subjects since the on-camera flash produces a harshness I find undesirable. On rare occasions when I use a flash, I mostly do so because I believe I need to improve my flash photography.
One other reason I would run back inside to grab my flash is that I feel what I’m photographing is too valuable to miss. Without flash, the loss of light as the sun sets would force me to choose the least offensive of the following:
1. Increase the ISO setting to a value that would make the photo look grainy
2. Widen the aperture and risk having parts of the subject out of focus.
3. Increase the exposure time to something that might produce a blurry results as well.