Hoverfly on Blackberry flowers

[Jerry van Dijk]

Happy New Year to all of you!
Took this last summer in Exmoor NP, UK. Don't know which species this is (too focussed on getting the shot handheld in a shaded forest to get an ID :w3).
The old flower in front of the fly is a bit overpowering the main subject, but I liked the color combinations and the nice green BG. About 50% crop. Details on the eyes were lost in the compression to meet file size limitations.

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 200mm Micro, handheld, ISO-1100, f/7.1, 1/125 sec.
ACR 6.3, exposure, fill light, clarity, vibrance, levels, sharpness, NR

[Ken Childs]

Hi Jerry, in spite of the extra compression, the details on the eyes still look pretty good to me! I really like the yellows on this fly!
You're right about that old flower being a distraction, not only because it's big and OOF but also because it's closer to a ROT point than the main subject is.

Here's what I did in this repost.
A CCW rotation to to get the face closer to the UL ROT position. Since I wasn't working on the original, this left some blank areas around the edges so I filled them using the smudge tool. If you have the canvas available in the original, you might want to try a similar rotation and then crop with the fly's head in the UR ROT position. The green in the UR seemed overpowering, at least to me so I lightly painted over it to tone it down. The only other thing I did was a slight contrast boost.

This may not be what you were looking for but when you have the extra canvas and pixels to work with, it's always worthwhile to try several different rotations/crops.

106616

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Ken, this works well for me! It does draw more attention to the flies head. With this rotation, it may make sense to add some room to the right. I do have the pixels and the canvas to experiment, so I will! Re. the eyes: in the original you can discern the individual facets. That's why I love my new combo of an amazing lens and what seems to be a very good sensor :S3:.

[bhavya joshi]

Hi... Jerry nice try... Like the fly eyes... and pop pollen on flowers.. good contact.. Wish the old flower is not there but its ok.. here we can see what actually fly is doing.. nice macro..

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Jerry. You captured an excellent pose with good detail within your DOF (in spite of losing some of the fine detail during the image compression). The soft natural light also works very well here and overall, this looks good for ISO 1100! I would agree with your self-assessment about the old flower - the image would have much more aesthetic appeal if that flower wasn't there. I like what Ken has done in the repost - these seemingly small changes will take your image up several notches. :S3: