Another Try - Emerald Damsel

[Mike Fuhr]

Went out yesterday to get another photo of this damselfly. They are incredibly shy. After a few hours, I got a few good ones. This is one of my favorites. My biggest complaint is the diagonal branch. This is the best I could do in bringing out the details of the wings -- even a fill flash doesn't help. They seem to suck up light and reflect very little. Love to hear the comments.

Nikon D50
100-300mm F4
240mm
F/6.0
1/60 (-.33)

Thanks,

Mike

[Bruce Enns]

Hi Mike, Your image looks very underexposed on my monitor...I've taken the liberty of doing a couple of simple photoshop adjustments to bring out the detail that is there. I did a levels adjustment where I moved the gamma (middle) slider left to about 1.80, a curves adjustment to re-introduce some contrast, and finally a hue/saturation adjustment to the greens to bump them up a bit, because they fade significantly from the above adjustments. These adjustments make the histogram 'comb' a fair bit on the right especially because the data was all clumped on the left (dark) end of the histogram. As a general rule, you want to expose so that you have some pixels at the right hand end of your histogram.

What metering mode were you using?

Cheers!
Bruce Enns

[Julie Kenward]

These guys are tough to photograph, no doubt about it. The BG does have quite a few distractions in it, most or all could probably be cloned out. However, when looking at the insect it is apparent that the front legs are more in focus than the insect's eyes and that's a bit of a bummer for me.

[Ed Vatza]

Overall, I think the damsel looks pretty good. I am glad Bruce did what he did. I was going to comment that the wings got lost in the background but he pulled them out. I do agree that the background is very busy. But then I have the same problem. they never land on those perfect perched for me.