On our second day, Yves and I spent our morning looking for insects and reptiles in the grazed hills around Pomaz, helped by Nikola and Sandor.

Under here an image of the grazy hills around Pomaz.

In less than thirty minutes Nikola found two species of Buprestidae, who were sitting motionless in the vegetation.

Under here Capnodis tenebrionis, who is found on members of the Rosaceae. This specimen was sitting in a Blackthorn Shrub (Prunus spinosa).

We discussed technical details of macro photography, such as the pros and contras of working with natural light against flash techniques.  The previous image was made by controlling the hard sunlight with a white diffusing umbrella, a technique often used by Nikola and which I hadn't tried out before in the field. The head and the underparts of beetle were lit up by means of a small reflector screen and two manually controlled flashes used with reduced power. I worked with a naturally exposed image and the use of the flashes on the second curtain. All this, in an attempt to make the image look as natural as possible on one hand, and to see enough detail on the head pattern and the underparts of the beetle on the other hand. Of course, this is only possible with a very cooperative subject, which doesn't fly or run away at the slightest movement. Unfortunately most of the beetles and many Jewel Beetles aren't so nice to mankind. Thank you very much Mister Capnodis!

Under here an image Yves Adams took from me on Szentendre, with a little less complicated technique... : no use of umbrella or reflecting screen, only two flashes and the use of clamps to hold the flower steady, as it was very windy that day. As it was cloudy, light conditions were better and we didn't have to use a diffusing white umbrella. Lucky us, as we didn't bring one...

The making of:

Under here, the result: an image of  Protaetia ungarica.

Under here an image of a small and very mobile Scarabid Beetle species, Maladera holosericea.

All the above mentioned techniques - use of flash on the second curtain - reflector screen, etc... aren't realistic options when a beetle is all the time on the run. The only possibility that lasts finally is to use the flash on automatically set-up TTL-modus. To make the image look more natural I used a second flash set up behind the beetle (for lightening up hard shadows) together with two flashes mounted on my camera.  I also worked on a higher ISO scale, so that the normal TTL flash modus - shutter speed of 1/60 sec comes close to the shutter speed with a natural exposure. The shot isn't perfect, mainly because of some of the harder flashlight-reflections. But hey, it's this, or ending up with no image! As it is a lovely and uncommon species, I hadn't to think too hard about trying out this solution.

Under here, Nikola taking pictures with an improved hand made flash-diffuser mounted on his lens, in order to avoid the harder burnt spots on the subject (image taken by Yves Adams), a technique that seems to work very well.

At the end of this interesting and productive day, we were surprised by a heavy shower and the temperature soon dropped down in the higher parts of the hills. This created extra opportunities for us to take pictures of some creatures, which are very shy and mobile during the hottest parts of the day:

First of all, the very small Snake-eyed Skink, followed by a Longhorn Beetle, Stenurella septempunctata and a Bee-fly, Bombilius fulvescens.

At last, an image of Sandor and Nikola in the Field (image by Yves Adams), followed by one of Nikola, Yves and me, sheltering in the forest for the rain. Please do note the multifunctional use of a white umbrella: it can not only help you making better images, it can also protect you against the rain... This finally convinced me to buy one for my next trip!

More images of my Hungary trip can be found in my stock images. Here is a link to the images taken in the Budapest Hills around Pomaz. Here is a link to the images form Szentendre Island.

Here is a portfolio with my favourite images form Hungary.