Creepy crawly C&C, please (not for the insect phobic)

[smag4life]

I saw this big roach yesterday out on my back porch on the fence and thought it would be neat to get some macro photos of it. A couple, which I'm showing here, came out very well, I thought. The only thing I did was adjust the saturation, gave them a slight color boost (which are apparently two different things in ViewNX 2), blurred out some noise and then applied an unsharp mask to sharpen them back up a bit. On the first one, there's some blurring around some of the edges the couldn't be avoided due to extremely narrow DOF. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

-AJ


Profile of roach by Aaron Lott, on Flickr
Shot with Nikon D3100 with 55-200mm DX AF-S VR zoom at 122mm (with 2x close up filter), f/5.6, 1/15s, ISO 100



Head on of roach by Aaron Lott, on Flickr
Shot with Nikon D3100 with 55-200mm DX AF-S VR zoom at 190mm (with 2x close up filter), f/10, 1/13s, ISO 100

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

I like the composition of the second shot.

The first, I wish you turned your camera vertical. Still, it's a decent image. Fascinating and creepygross.

 

[smag4life]

Thanks. I actually took the first one after the second shot and I didn't think to turn the camera vertical until after it had already scurried off. I wish I could have got the whole thing in the frame of the first one. Thanks again.

 

[Flower Child]

I agree with Bitter Jeweler, the second is far better. Its your depth of field and composition which makes it interesting. Wouldn't be putting it up on my wall anytime soon though. But anyway good job.

 

[BekahAura]

I agree with Bitter, the composition is better in the 2nd one. But I like that the roach fills more of the frame in the 1st. Perhaps you could crop the second image a little tighter, while keeping the overall composition.

 

[tygr1]

Eeeewwwwwww!

I like number 2 as well. Crop it a little and you have a great shot.