Ladybug swarm

I had wanted to photograph a swarm of ladybugs for many years but didn't know where to find them. One summer I was driving all over Arizona looking for lightning storms, and I stopped in the mountains of Flagstaff to ask a local man if he knew from which directions the storms came. As we were talking, his 5-year son came over to us and said, 'Dad, look what I found.' In his cupped hands was a huge pile of ladybugs. I couldn't believe it. He told us he'd found them on a tree trunk -- on the other side of the tree from where we were standing. I never would have seen them had serendipity not happened at that moment. The tree was about 14 inches in diameter, and that meant the curvature of the surface made depth of field a challenge. In order for this picture to work, it had to be sharp from edge to edge. I used the smallest lens aperture on the lens, f/32, and since the insects were constantly in motion a long shutter speed was out of the question. Therefore, I used off-camera flash. That provided enough light at 100 ISO for the small lens aperture and a fast shutter. I took this with a 50mm macro lens.