[jewel]

Jewel

[danpen]

Excellent, really sharp. I love the detail on the eye.

cheers

Dan

[Markulous]

Ahh, lovely combination of colours and, as Dan says, nice and sharp.

I guess I'd prefer a less central bee but am not that fussed!

[Charlotte]

This is a lovely shot. Since it's in critique section tho' I will examine it for ways I think it could be improved

Firstly you have a dust bunny in exactly the same spot that I have one on my sensor That could be cloned out, since it is quite noticeable, being in a plain BG area (top LH corner).

I do like the comp, although it's a bit concentrated on the LHS, with a lot of dead space on the RHS. I'd crop about an inch off the RHS, just outside of the 3rd/4th prominent petals. This takes away the excess BG whilst still leaving the bee plenty of 'looking into' space. It would leave the bee even more centrally placed, so I'd also crop half an inch off the top.

Colours are a bit flat + could use some saturation.

Tonal range/exposure is good.

DoF is good, the image is sharp in all the right places.

A good image which, with a few tweaks, could be a great one

[Rob Barron]

Sorry to disagree with charlotte but if you crop this it will spoil it. You'll have to crop off a part of the flower on the right which will then make it look two balanced in a boring sort of way. I don't feel there is a problem with the spaces around this and the lighter green BG area balances the darker left BG. Without it, the overall picture will feel too dark.

I also wouldn't push up the sats as with strong purples and the lovely soft BG, you'll have the image breaking up into noise very quickly. I have a feeling the sats are entirely down to whatever monitor you're looking at this on as the flower is plenty strong enough on mine. My guess is the printed high res version will be fine.

There is a touch of motion blur in the thorax hairs but hey, that is being VERY picky and I don't feel this picture needs me being that picky!

Good effort here Jewel :o)

Cheers,
Rob

[skipper954]

Hi Jewel

One of the really good things about this site is that there is a lot of difference of opinion and nobody is afraid to express it, all in good comaraderie.

Here there are a whole lot of different ways to treat the saturation and cropping, and in the end, it just has to please you.

I particularly like the purple flower with its variations in color, and the green bg and its different kind of variation.

skip

[Charlotte]

It's difficult to describe one's vision + also to visualise someone else's vision, so I thought I'd show you what I meant, see what you think.




Selectively sharpened the bee + flower (so's not to worsen the noise in the BG) @ 100% opacity, using overlay blending mode + then reduced the layer opacity to 50% (because it was a bit strong at 100%). Increased saturation by 20%. Cropped out some of the BG to bring more focus onto the bee. This consequently cropped out your white border ... white borders tend to draw the eye out of the image, which this image did not suit, you want to draw the eye in toward the subject, since it's a makro shot. A white border would better suit a landscape or other type of image where you want the viewer's eye to roam. Lastly, I used the blur hand tool to go over the BG to smooth out the noise.

[dogdots]

I really like the color combo--think you did a good job.