2023 – Seasonal Bee Yards
There are four seasons recognized in a year. But, those four seasons are different in Maine. And different in Alabama and Arizona and Idaho and Oregon and every other State and location within each and every State in between. How you arrange and set up your Apiary location has to take into consideration all the seasonal differences you as a beekeeper, wherever you are, encounter, whether it is in your backyard or in a neighboring field, in the mountains or on the coast. What does your Apiary look like? Is it the same year round or is it organized differently in Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter? Share your photos for the 2023 Bee Culture Calendar.
Look at the shape of the photo on each page. Not quite square, certainly not vertical. We lose excellent vertical photos every year because we simply can’t use them. Think of what your photo will look like when framing it with your camera. Then turn your camera 90 degrees and look again. You can take 100 photos to get one good one. Take 100.
Have your shot in either full sun, or full shade, but not both. Your camera won’t like what it sees and won’t do a good job of lighting.
Horizontal shots will do OK but keep the width:height ratio somewhat in mind. Have the subject close enough that we can see the details. So take 100 photos. What the heck?
Take a lot of shots. Lots and lots. Slightly different angles both left and right and up and down. Fuzz down your flash with tissue or partially block it so the light isn’t crisp. If you can, reduce the intensity of the flash, too. Try a hundred ways, and look to see which one worked best. That’s the one we want.
THIS IS IMPORTANT.
Submit your photos as a single jpg file, attached to an email, not embedded in the email. Send one photo per email, and include WITH EACH EMAIL YOUR NAME, MAILING ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER. We got hundreds of photos this year and keeping them all straight when they are not identified gets to be a real difficult task – and there aren’t many of us here to do that. If it isn’t identified, it won’t get looked at, so please label each. Make it easy for us and you stand a much better chance of getting your shot in the calendar.
Deadline for submissions for Bee Culture’s 2023 calendar is October 3, 2022 in our office and on my computer. So mark your calendars now (OH, look! It’s already marked on your 2022 Calendar a month earlier!) and get going. Once entered, photos can be used by Bee Culture magazine.
As usual, send your photos as jpgs to me at Jerry@BeeCulture.com, with 2023 Calendar in the subject line. FOR EVERY ATTACHED PHOTO (1 PER EMAIL) include your name, email, phone and address. If you don’t we can’t use the photo. And good luck!
