Spider webs

[TonyW]

I went out yesterday afternoon to practise with my macro lens. I found some spider webs which showed nicely in the glancing sunlight. The first one is just as it came off the camera except for a little cropping. The second one has been darkened generally and the contrast increased. The effects are surprising to me.

I would be interested in your comments. What else should I have done?

1.


056A2685 by tonyw36, on Flickr

2.


056A2689 by tonyw36, on Flickr

3. And to change the theme, what better way to photograph a macropod than with a macro lens?


056A2674 by tonyw36, on Flickr

[Ken Curtis]

Hi Tony.

The white balance is biased toward blue in the kangaroo photo. The first thing I would do is adjust it towards yellow, and then try to bring out what you want. I would consider cropping off some of the brighter areas on the left and top, and just a bit on the bottom and right. The cropping would help us focus on the animal, and make for a more dynamic image by placing the kangaroo off center.

[TonyW]

Thanks for your comment, Ken. It did get slightly blue when the raw file was converted to JPG but when I made it a more yellow, it looked unnatural. The natural colour here is on the blue side. This image of the wallaby was an afterthought and does not have that much significance.

The images of the spider webs do not show to advantage when shown here. They need to be blown up to a bigger size where the refraction or diffraction effects make them much more colourful. I think this is a genuine effect and not due to the lens.