Another Fly-Living on the Edge

[Dave Leroy]

A fairly large crop and a couple extra passes of Topaz Denoise and then the usual PP'n. Taken this morning with a 50D, 100/2.8 macro at f/8, 1/60, ISO800.
Dave

[Aidan Briggs]

Nice BG and detail in the subject. I like the perch, but would tone down the brightness of it just a bit.

[Ed Vatza]

May be a fairly large crop but the detail still looks superb to me as does the background. You managed to tame the noise remarkably well.

[Dave Leroy]

Thanks for the comments. I had wondered if I had cropped too much; I guess it was not too bad. I had also tried a couple ways to reduce the leaf without much success. Dave

[Steve Maxson]

Very nice sharpness and detail in the fly, Dave. I like the clean background and the brightness of the leaf doesn't really bother me. Well done.

[Julie Kenward]

Dave, I really like your original post. You got great details on the fly, just the right amount of sharpness throughout the image, and a dreamy BG. What I didn't love about it was the bright whiteness of the leaf and how much space the fly was getting in the frame.

I cropped it from your 13x11 to 13x4.5 to really bring him out in the frame. I also tilted the frame a bit so the fly is more at an angle in the image.

I selected the leaf and lowered the middle tones a bit using a levels adjustment. That still didn't tone down the leaf as much as I would have liked so I did a multiply blend mode on it and masked off everything but the bright parts of the leaf, leaving the opacity of the layer at about 70%.

I then added an omni light effect putting the light source in the ULC coming down on the front of the fly's head, giving it even more highlight and detail. Finally, I changed the red hues of the BG in a hue/saturation adjustment so the BG matched the color of the fly's eye a bit more.

Again, the original image didn't NEED all this - I just wanted to play with it and see if I could make your really good image have a little more impact. Visually, it's pretty close to the original but I sure had fun playing with it!

[Dave Leroy]

Thanks Steve and Jules, thanks for all the work you did. The green leaf does look a lot better, and I like the idea of the tilt. I'll keep that little tip in mind! Tks, Dave

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Dave Good looking fly !!!

For getting the fly larger in frame do try a converter I use a 180 and the 1.4X lives on the lens !! I think with your lens and two 25 mm tubes you can get close to a full frame !!!

lots of detail good perch and bg !! Excellent !!!

[Dave Leroy]

Good idea Alfred. I just had a set of tubes delivered today so will check it out. Tks. Dave