Next Phase of the Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillar

[Marina Scarr]

My last thread featured this caterpillar in it's green phase. Here you see it in its orange phase.

Canon 1D3, Canon 70-200L F4 IS & tubes @ 85mm
F14, 1/125sec, ISO 400, manual mode
Flash on manual (held by a friend) - handholding

Comments and critiques welcomed and much appreciated.

Marina Scarr
Florida Master Naturalist
www.marinascarrphotography.com (http://www.marinascarrphotography.com)


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[Jonathan Ashton]

The lighting on the caterpillar is optimal, there is a 3D effect, focus is excellent, very slight fall off at the tail end, it is nicely presented on the leaf and the background is complimentary. A very pleasing and informative image.
One tiny query has someone been monkeying around in the top left corner:w3, the edge of the leaf looks a little out of kilter.

[Satish Ranadive]

Marina:
Honestly I know very little about macro.
However this is superb image with very nice exposure.Nice lights and colors.

Regards,
Satish.

[AdamStuckert]

Hi Marina,

This is a beautiful picture of a beautiful individual. In my opinion the picture would be improved if there was more space on both the left and top, particularly if the leaf proper ended a little below the top left corner and the leaf stem was going out of the frame. Still, I know this was handheld, which makes that sort of composition difficult. That is my tiny critique of a superb image!

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Marina. This is a very cool looking caterpillar! Excellent sharpness, a nice diagonal comp, and a clean background make this a pleasing image. The light on the caterpillar is very nice without a lot of specular highlights. I'm wondering if you can open up the rather hard shadow under the caterpillar a bit more? Are you using a diffuser on your flash? It might help produce softer shadows and reduce the reflections on the top half of the leaf (though the leaf appears to be very shiny so there would still be some reflections present.) Overall, this is very well done and I think that tweaking the shadows will make it even better! :S3:

[Jason Stander]

Hi Marina, This is a beautiful image... like been said.... comp, exposure and detail is all spot on... beautiful bg and dof... agree though on the top left corner... otherwise WD!:w3

[Nancy Phillips]

Beautiful image - and the caterpillar is eating its own perch. The colors are gorgeous.

[Dave Johnson]

Stunning sharpness and detail Marina. A tip-top image. One to be proud of. VWD.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Marina,
Some great things pointed out above. I would lighten the underside of the body a few points......that will make this explode even more on the screen! Easy tweak to a very nice image! Glad to see you getting into macro. Get the MT 24 twin lights......work great for hand holding!

[Jon Swanson]

I really like the colors and the pattern on the caterpillar. It looks rather 3-D ish and makes my eyes go a little bonkers! Very nice capture Marina!

[Bobo Madar]

This is a beautiful caterpillar. As others have mentioned already - almost 3d-ish, great use of light. Sharpness and DOF both excellent.

A great learning experience for me as I am very new to all this.

Thanks for sharing.

[Bob Miller]

Beautiful...enough said!