Jungle prowler

[Randy Stout]

I was out mowing the yard, saw this fellow in a tree, figured I had to give him a go!
Used my gloves to weight some of the nearby limbs to give me a better view, pulled a couple of weeds that were sticking up behind him. He is kind of scary looking, glad he is small!

D700 Sigma 180 macro 1/125s f/11 ISO 500 handheld

Post: CS5 PS, curves, selective sharpening, vignettting

A bit busy for sure, but liked the habitat also.

Advice always appreciated.

Cheers

Randy

[Cheryle Sytsma]

Great colors...
very nice shot!

[Art Kornienko]

Would have been nice to see the antennae better. Was this as close as you could get or is this the comp you wanted?

[Randy Stout]

Thanks Cheryle

Art:; I have lots of closer shots, but liked the colors on the body. And of course, as I got in tighter, I lost more and more of the antennae, so this one seemed like the best compromise with this setting.

Cheers

Randy

[Allen Sparks]

Hi Randy, I like your choice of composition and distance. Let me say that I find these guys very hard to photograph well and I think you did a fine job with this shot. I like the sharpness of the head and upper abdomen. The habitat shown does not really bother me (kind of like it really) partly because when I try to shoot these they are always flipped over on the wrong side of a leaf with no intention of moving and helping me out. :) There seems to be some "cloudiness" to the right side of the photo causing the extreme front leg to be blurred...changing your shooting angle a little may have helped with this (I'm assuming there was an obstruction of some kind) but I know you may not have had that much leeway as keeping parallel to these guys is critical to get the whole abdomen sharp. Speaking of which I notice some softness in the lower abdomen but not too bad. Did you use flash? I would have been tempted to try flash at about f16 (manual mode) to get complete sharpness along that abdomen but of course that may have wreaked havoc with the busyness of the background. Very nice capture.

[Randy Stout]

Allen:

Thanks for the thoughtful observations. Yes, there were some needles between me and the front leg of the mantis. I was trying hard to keep him in focus plane, since he is so long, and as soon as I changed my angle to avoid the needles, I lost my plane of focus, so to speak. I was also a bit concerned about spooking him, since I was leaning in against the tree already, had moved a few branches with my gloves, etc.
I did try some with flash, but wasn't happy with the overall luminosity balance, and it tended to aggravate the relative impact of the mantis vs. the background. F/11 seemed to be my best compromise between the mantis being sharp without too much background intrusion. I was also shooting handheld, which added to the challenges of shallow DOF.

Thanks again, I do appreciate your careful observations and thoughts.

Randy

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Randy,
Very tough to get the entire mantis in.......major DOF needed so your compromise works for me. Burning or dodging those antenna might help.....but falloff is expected there....even at f32.....so no big deal for me. I actually like the BG and perch.....and while the RH side blur may not bother me that much....but I wish the FG branch wasn't there. I think you did very well overall!

[Ken Childs]

Randy, just yesterday Allen and I were discussing just how hard it is to get good full bug shots of mantises so I think you did great! The blurred front leg is a bit distracting but it isn't a killer. I would like to see the dark areas lightened up just a bit, maybe using SH, so the antennae show up better and since 1/2 of the edges are dark already, maybe a vignette or darkening of the bottom and right edges would look good.

[Randy Stout]

Roman and Ken:

Thanks for the input. I already did a significant vignette on all the corners, but do see how the lower ones could go a bit more. I will play around with the antennas, see if I can bring them out a bit more. They are so small that it is a little bit of a challenge to bring them up without introducing artifacts, but I will work on it.

Cheers

Randy

[Daniel Cadieux]

This image has alot of personality, I like it alot. Man, I haven't seen one of these in ages (of course, ever since I bought digital photography gear!!) Good observations from previous posters...but looks like you did best you could under the circumstances.

[Art Kornienko]

I've never seen one of these, wish I could just for once.