Bees and others

[JustinZ850]

Went for a morning walk along the cart path of the closed down golf course down the road. Everytime I go out shooting I gain more respect for you guys that get amazing shots!

I don't know much about insects, but can somebody identufy #1?

1

Unknown by JustinZ850, on Flickr

2

Lost In the Yellow by JustinZ850, on Flickr

3

Sweet Tooth by JustinZ850, on Flickr

4

Blending In by JustinZ850, on Flickr

Do you think a tighter crop on the grasshopper would be better? he seems to get lost in the mix, but not much I could do about isolating it in the bushes.

 

[jrice12]

Just my opinions:

#1 Don't know what it is. Background is good and isolation is fair. Got some blowout on some of the white markings - if you have a raw file you may be able to recover them. Focus is fair, but DOF has that "not quite in focus" appearance at the bugs' bottom. All of these shots have good subject scale.

#2 lighting is too harsh. See if you can get a portable diffuser to take with you - just hold it in one hand while shooting with the other. Also, busy image - good focus. Less DOF may have helped to isolate.

#3 lighting is too harsh again. We loose virtually all details in the dark areas of the bee. Try reverse "S" shaping the gamma curve to see if you can sacrifice some mid-tone gain for dark level boost and de-compression of the highlights of the flower. Good focus, good background and isolation of the subject here (compare to #2). Good composition, like the branch at top with items dropping down from it. This is the kind of image you should be sorting to save after shooting those 100 shots! This is best of the set.

#4 Finally got the lighting to work but the subject is a bit blended into the surroundings. Not bad really. Might try "S"-ing the gamma curve here, you actually could stand more gain in the mid-tone - there is plenty of room at the dark end for this. There's a great to tell if cropping would work better.... TRY IT! Suggest removing the bottom 1/3rd which is the busiest part. Also, try different rotation angles to see if you can get a better position.

 

[JustinZ850]

As always thanks for the tips, going to work on cleaning up the images a bit tonight and maybe dig some better shots out of the many files I have from this morning. Will also head back out again in the morning to reshoot some of the things I found today. I had an off camera bracket and diffuser show up in the mail today, so going to give my speedlight a shot with macro tomorrow.