While I was doing landscaping in the backyard, I had another friendly little visitor. Tools down, run inside and grab the camera.
I was trying to show the amazing colours that these little guys have up close. I was also testing how much difference there is between f/11 and f/16 in terms of acceptable sharp focus. (I notice that it looks different in terms of saturation on every monitor I have which is annoying, but hopefully I have it right for a happy medium now.)
How did I go?
Canon 40D, Canon 100mm Macro lens, Canon 580 Ex II flash.
1/250 sec at f/16, ISO 100.
Cheers!
Craig.
Hi Gents,
ReplyDeleteI did crop this image in from the original.
Did I crop it in enough?
Should I have taken a bit more from the left hand side or would that have had the dragon fly looking out of the frame too much or too close to the left?
Cheers!
Craig.
Craig,
ReplyDeleteI like the less documentary style crop here. As a viewer, I get a stronger connection to the subject when the photographer gets in closer. However the dragon fly still looks rather centred and static in this image.
I would probably try an even tighter crop favouring the right wing (and including the wing tips) and clipping more off the left wing and pushing the perch even more out of the centre of the frame.
Also there is some great potential for colour in this image, however I get an overall sense of orange in this image. Using a calibrated monitor I would try to set the white balance from one of the neutral grey points in the image that has just a hint of orange and see if you can find a place that gives more separation to the colours in this image.
Since I can't post an image to show what I did, I'll give you the details. I loaded the image into Lightroom and played around with the white balance a bit. The changes were -28 for blue-yellow and -20 for green-magenta. Your tastes might vary but that will give you a starting point to understand what I'm talking about. After this single change, the image has more colour separation and depth allowing the subject to pop out more from the background. Try it and see what you think.
Brutal Enough?
steve
Hi Craig,
ReplyDeleteI like the crop here. I think losing the tips of the wings is good, because they're outside the focus area, and I quite like having both sets of wing tips outside the frame.
I'll have to give Steve's colour suggestions a go with this picture, because it would be good to see the subject pop out a bit more from the background, especially with both background and subject having such similar colours.
Geoff.