Midnight Crooner

[Andrew McLachlan]

Shot this Spring Peeper last night out in the vernal ponds behind my home. Always a challenge to get low enough in the water to shoot the frogs at eye level, but this little fella was quite cooperative. I wish the vocal sac was a little more inflated - maybe next time. Realized I forgot to clone out the brighter area above the frog's head, will have to do that. Did much cloning of flash-generated specular highlights.

Nikon D200
Nikon 105 micro lens
ISO 100
f16 @ 1/60 sec
SB400 on home-made flash bracket
handheld

Look forward to comments.

92510

[Kaushik Balakumar]

A fine moment, very well captured, Andrew. Liked the low perspective here. You've got some amazing textures on its body. Wondering if mild vignetting in bottom corners would help ?!

[Randy Stout]

Andrew:

Looking at your focal length, I would say this was a very cooperative frog!
Nice shooting angle, colors, exposure.

I would consider toning down the reed right under his sac because it is just bright enough to draw the eye. Not much, and maybe the brighter area by his rump.

Agree about the lighter area above the sac, but it didn't draw my eye as much as the areas I mentioned.

I will have to out there and try the frogs!

Cheers

Randy

[bhavya joshi]

Beautiful and cooperative frog.. with nice Pose and texture and more interesting, vocal.. nice captured ..Andrew..:S3:

[Brendan Dozier]

Very cool looking frog, Andrew! Nice pose, detail, texture and love the eye-level view.

[Mitch Haimov]

Very nice, Andrew! I concur with pretty much everything said above, so will not repeat. Wish there were a place to experiment with frogs close to my home!

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks guys for the comments, very much appreciated.

Randy, thanks for pointing out the brighter reeds I will tone them down when I take care of the area just above the frog's face.

[Steve Maxson]

What? They can inflate the vocal sack even more than this? :S3: This is impressive given that these frogs are only about an inch long and that you were using a 105 mm lens. The pose and low shooting angle are excellent. You have good sharpness, the exposure appears to be right on, and you did a good job of removing specular highlights (I might go ahead and remove the last few as the little white spots really draw my eye). A couple other tweaks have been noted above. Very well done. :cheers:

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Andrew,
Great advice given above and really nice job by you capturing a great moment! Tweaks will make this one shine!!!

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks Steve and Roman, very much appreciate the comments.