Vida van der Walt
03-02-2010, 12:12 PM
One of my older shot reworked. A tiny 4mm species of fruit fly feeding on the pollen of an Osteospermum flower.
I shot this at our Botanical Gardens which is close to my home. Whenever I visit the Gardens I always head straight for a bed of these flowers as these little fruit flies are almost always there. Because of their size they are difficult to spot on the flowers. These flowers are low growing and I am able to sit down and rest my elbows on my legs when shooting.
This is the closest I can take you as it was shot at maximum 5x magnification and cropped.
There are a few things that bother me about the shot but I also like it because the fly is covered in pollen. I would have preferred a less square crop (I had no more space on top and the oof petal at the bottom had to be cropped as it was distracting. The turned legs on the left and dark inner of the flower on the right complicated matters further). One of the antennae of the fly is missing and I also don't like it that the feet are hidden behind the petal.
I lightened the shadow between the petals, cropped, sharpened, levels, nr and removed a few blemishes from the petal.:)
Canon 5D Mark11; MP E 65mm; MT 24EX
apert f16; ss1/125; iso 200
I shot this at our Botanical Gardens which is close to my home. Whenever I visit the Gardens I always head straight for a bed of these flowers as these little fruit flies are almost always there. Because of their size they are difficult to spot on the flowers. These flowers are low growing and I am able to sit down and rest my elbows on my legs when shooting.
This is the closest I can take you as it was shot at maximum 5x magnification and cropped.
There are a few things that bother me about the shot but I also like it because the fly is covered in pollen. I would have preferred a less square crop (I had no more space on top and the oof petal at the bottom had to be cropped as it was distracting. The turned legs on the left and dark inner of the flower on the right complicated matters further). One of the antennae of the fly is missing and I also don't like it that the feet are hidden behind the petal.
I lightened the shadow between the petals, cropped, sharpened, levels, nr and removed a few blemishes from the petal.:)
Canon 5D Mark11; MP E 65mm; MT 24EX
apert f16; ss1/125; iso 200