Painted Turtle

[John Mack]

Came across a small group of baby painted turtles heading to the water for the first time. This image was created in Ithaca, New York on 5/3/18 at 9:43AM. Image adjustments in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Camera on sticks trigged with a remote. Manual focus with live view.

Canon 5D MarkIV
Canon 180mm 3.5L Macro USM
ISO 800
f/13
1/60sec

[Allen Sparks]

Hi John,
Nice critical focus on the eye - I always find eyes of turtles to be interesting. Looks like you caught this guy at a nice angle too to show off the head. Nice frame.
Allen

[Jonathan Ashton]

Well exposed good colours. I find taking images of animals such as this can prove difficult. At first it seems easy - get in close use a tripod delay shutter MLU/cable release etc etc.......... try now to ask myself what am I trying to achieve by taking the picture, i.e. show the behavior, take a portrait, or show in the natural surroundings. All well and good of course provided things work out!.
This image looks sharp in the right place, i.e. principally the left eye. Now the question is how could it be improved - or indeed can it be improved. It's a shot of a baby turtle but how big is it - can we tell?? I think the purpose of the shot was to show this cute little guy to his best advantage (and in his surroundings perhaps?).
I would have previously taken precisely the shot you did John, but now I think I would have considered taking the shot from a greater distance, this would have afforded greater DOF, the legs would have been sharper and perhaps we would have been better able to gauge the true size by for example the surrounding leaf litter or pebbles/detritus etc. Another advantage of being further away would have been that you would have been able to use an aperture to suit the situation, i.e. you could keep most of the turtle in focus and also have a faster shutter speed, the background would have been recognizable yet inobtrusive. Like you did I would have tried as much as possible to take the image from a low angle, as a general rule of thumb eye height is usually good, in this case of course a slightly higher elevation would prove more practicable.. Hope this helps.

[Steve Kaluski]

Jon can you CC to the same thread in Wildlife too please.

Thanks

[John Mack]

Thank you for the detailed critique Jonathan.