Metallic Green Bee, Agapostemon sp.

I love metallic bugs. 

Al, you should put out a coffee table book of bug photos. Sell posters. Maybe smugmug already does this. Get some media student to put together a YouTube video showcasing your photography, set to music. You're really amazing and most people have never seen your stuff. You deserve the exposure. No one cares about ant taxonomy, but people remember amazing photos forever. It's not fair and it's not right, but it's true. I realize that for professional reasons you've got to play down your photography as a pleasant aside to serious research. But your pictures tell a different story. Am I way off-base?

Cheers

Absolutely stunning shot. I love how the eye and the stamen are in the same focal plane.

What is the flower? A native rose?

Fairport!? Why were you in Fairport?

Wow, beautiful pretty colours :-)

Nice one!

Stunning colors! What a fantastic photo. In the remnants of the Blackland Prairie that--strangely enough--exist inside an urban park here in Dallas, these bees are prolific in spring and summer. They're small but definitely worth stopping to admire.

And the more I look at this photo, the more I'm mesmerized by the eye and the pollen on the back leg. You really captured some beautiful details. Wow!

Fairport? I grew up there and still visit now and again.

Thanks for your kind words, Warren.

It's not that I want to play down the photography. I like doing both research and photography, but it's a great deal easier to balance the two- and pay the mortgage- by keeping the research full time and the photography part-time, rather than the alternative.

That, and keeping up with the research community means I have photographic access to some rather interesting subjects.

I see; I did my undergraduate at Nazareth. I suppose it's not that fantastic of a coincidence now that I've thought it through a bit more.

Wonderful photo though!