Dave it's a real pleasure to see that my tutorial gives some inspiration.
no 1 - nice colours, no reflections. little bit of noise. composition is not bad but you cut this creature legs. generally i'm impressed - i know how small they are, and i've even never tried to get so close to them. but my advise is - try something bigger for practicing. and at the beginning try objects that you don't need to crop too much.
no 2 - nice try but we don't really see to much. with spiders like this one the problem is that they like to sit on stones and they have good camouflage. i would say - practice your skills with finding sharpness.
i'm waiting for more
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