Red Velvet Ant on Lantana

[Patrick Sparkman]

This is a female Red Velvet ant, also called a cow killer. These are actually a type of wasp, and the female does not have wings. I found it running around the yard. These things really move, and I have not been able to photograph one before. This one spent a little time in the frig slowing down, so that I could place her on a Lantana bloom plucked from the garden then placed in my lightbox. These are pretty large, around 3/4" long, and supposedly have a very nasty sting.

Canon 5DIII, 65 MP-E at approx 1.5:1, MT-24 flash Diffused, 580EXII slaved for background -1 2/3, 1/200 f16 iso 200,full frame, Processed in Lightroom, Nik Color Efex Tonal Contrast & Detail Extract

All comments welcome.

[nzmacro]

Sharpness, DOF, selective focus, fine details and a good ratio, all spot on IMO. The red is amazing. Never seen one and not one we have here, so this is fantastic to see and especially when shot as well as this.

All the best Patrick, excellent macro work and shot.

Danny.

[Patrick Sparkman]

I just took another look at this photo, and to be honest it looks kinda funky to me now. It was late, and I really over processed the flowers. So often I overexpose the red channel when shooting something this yellow so I intentionally underexposed this original to make sure the red was not clipped. However, I did it a little too much and this shot is overall too dark to me, and too HDRy (is that a word). So I reprocessed it lighter, and made sure to mask out the Nik Tonal contrast and Detail enhance on the flowers so that they look more natural. Then I cropped from the right to remove that sliver of green in the URHC. Overall I like this better. Any other opinions?

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Patrick. These are cool insects - we have them here, but I haven't seen one in many years - I need to look harder, I guess. I think your repost is a clear improvement. I like the head-on look and you have very nice sharpness and detail where you most need it. Good comp and nice use of diffused flash also. Very well done!

[Charissa]

Beautiful insect (with a nasty bite :)
Nice macro shot, like the angle and detail.