Lady bug at Spring Time!! :)

[ClaudioG]

Hey all..could i please ask for any and all opinions on these images? Pleease...I"m always trying to improve.

Thank you!!
#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

[gregj1763]

Hi Claudio, the last image is my pick of them. A much better angle than the rest showing the face area of the bug.
I think it could do to be more heavily cropped, losing the top left of the image and focusing more on the bug itself.
Cheers, Greg

[Brownbear]

Hi Claudio,
I also like #5 and think a crop would place more attention on the lady bug. But I adore #3 for the light and colour, just beautiful.

[ClaudioG]

Thank you both for your kind comments and advice..i have taken your advice and cropped the image..but didnt want to go in to close... may i ask if its because of the sharpness that grabbed your eyes on the final image? Did it have anything to do with colour or composition?
Thank you again


Is this better?

[kespada51]

Nice Macro work, yes the last one is much better!

[ajsmith]

I also like #5 the best and the crop looks great. The colors are nice too, love the background in #4 and #5. The colors compliment the lady bug and are very soft to not take away from the subject.

[Wavelength]

#3 is very artistic; i like them as a whole; fine color scheme

[Brownbear]

Hi Ali,

Yes, for me it was the sharp focus, detail and DOF in the last shot, and also the lovely bokeh in the background. It looks amazing cropped... Beautiful!

[John 2]

Compositionally, it's always better to have the bug moving into the frame if you can. From that point of view, 2 and 3 are the better compositions but the lighting isn't as good in these. Your last cropped version of no.5 is probably the best overall. However it has a lot of specular highlights (flash?). You can tone these down if you are using PS or its equivalent. Use a soft brush at a low opacity, and pick up the colour adjacent to the highlights you want to modify and carefully paint over them. Don't paint them out altogether though because they're part of the modelling that gives the image shape.

[ClaudioG]

Thanks Christina and Nandakumar..we gonna have to come up with a shorter name bud .. funny u should say artistic feel..i was playing with PS..and did this to my image

was seriously thinking of blowing it up and doing some kinda print just for our house.
What do you think?

[ClaudioG]

Hi John...thanks for the advice..i'll play around with PS for a while and see if i can tone down those light spots..yes..with that one i was using flash...im having alot of difficulty getting really sharp images...i've seen yours and they spectacular..do you use flash?

[John 2]

................do you use flash?

No I don't generally use a flash gun except occasionally at a very low power and usually with a diffuser as fill in. For the same reason, I avoid bright sun. It casts too much shadow. Bright overcast is probably the best light. Sharpness out of the camera is always a problem. You just have to balance shutter speed with aperture for DOF altering ISO as needed. Getting the right angle/plane of focus to reduce the DOF problem also helps - and if you think that I do all of that for every shot I take, you will still believe in Father Christmas. Most of the time, you see something, you grab it and sometimes it's right and sometimes it goes in the bin.

[ClaudioG]

Thanks John....hope to have same quality of images as your dragon fly as time goes by...thanks again for your advice..much appreciated