Very nice macro shot. Detail looks great although a bit of the image looks to outside the DOF range. I know it is very hard to get a perfect DOF when you get this close. Love the water bead.

Ugh! That's not water. I think it's saliva. gross!

Mark, how do you get so close to them and they don't fly away? I can't get within 3 feet of the flies in my area.

Like a jewel, amazing colours. Very beautiful.

Flies cannot chew. They have to suck up their food....When a housefly lands on our food, it vomits on the food. The digestive juices, enzymes, and saliva in the vomit begin to break down and dissolve the food. The fly can then suck up the liquid food with its sponge-like mouth parts and its proboscis. I have no connection with this site where the information is posted: http://www.uen.org/utahlink/activities/view_activity.cgi?activity_id=1026

BTW, nice shot ;-)

Special, A lot of work to get this image. I need a tutorial

Mark, your photos always leave me with with two things - my jaw hanging open in awe and a burning desire to reverse my 50mm lens to see if I can do this, too - and maybe a new digital camera...OK three things. Keep them coming.

Incredible capture -- how rare to see such an image that is compositionally and tonally great.

I really hate flies. Gross!! Then why am I looking at the fly? This is because the fly may be the most beautiful one in the world...

Work your magic more often on such bugs :D

Fantastic shot!!!

Bugman: Another winner!

I think I'm gonna puke.

Appalling. I don't even want to know what the yellow stuff is on it's back (my imagination is already providing unhappy guesses). That's a hell of a photo.

I don't think you can get a much better shot than that. I am trying to do some macro work myself. You sure have set the bar pretty high. Nice Work!

Congratulations Mark! Your work deserves to be in the POW ring, and its about time it got there. You are long, long overdue for this honor.

Thanx for your kind words.

After much searching around, I learned that you are correct about the bubble being saliva from the process of regurgitation that is used to enable digestion.

As for the POW, my impression is the photo.net elves don't like bugs.

These are the kind of bugs that are a good thing for the site. Love the play on words. Look at the detail in the eye of the fly! Incredible, as are all of your photos.

you know what? This morning I opened the Home Page and could have sworn this was the POW, which is what I was yammering about in my last post. Now, I see it's a dolphin. I came back to it later in the day by way of my comments history and wondered why there were so few comments. What an idiot I am! It must have been in the front page rotation and I clicked on it before the real POW had loaded.

No matter. I still think your work is outrageously excellent. Who needs a electron microscope when Mark Plonsky is around?

Stunning!!!!!!!!!Even human eyes can't see these details easily.excellent macro.

excellent. top shot. what a macro!!!

Brilliant! As are all your Macro's

bubble!

Very interesting shot! I wish the eye was in the DOF, though. BTW, I didn't know flies chewed bubble-gum.