Frog breaking surface

[Brendan Dozier]

Took this back in September at San Diego Botanic Gardens. Liked how the frog's head was breaking the surface. ACR, CS5, some dodging to lighten surface tension area, cloned out a few spots on BG and frog, NR.

7D, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM +2.0x, HH
1/100
10.0
ISO 400

[bhavya joshi]

Like the Half Dip frog.. Nice Shot.. Eye is looking Little unsharp to me..but Good to see full frog in frame..TFS.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Good image of the frog, I like that we see both above and under water. The angle at which you shot it, however, is not really working for me. I would have liked a lower angle. Image looks quite sharp to me.

[Bob Miller]

Brendan...Unusual shot!.......Sharpness looks Ok to me.You might consider cloning out or darkening the brightest leaf directly below the frog...to me it is too distracting IMHO

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Brendan. This is nicely done for HH this rig at 1/100. I like how well we can see the underwater portion of the frog - and how sharp it is. I think that darkening the leaf that Bob mentions would improve the image, but it's not a deal breaker for me. To me, the eye seems a little soft - another round of selective sharpening there might do the trick and make this image really shine! :S3:

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Brendan, I like that we can see the whole frog and the underwater portion of the frog looks good too. For me the water has too much glare and from your specs it looks like you didn't use a polarizer. I did try out Viveza 2 on your photo, which I will do with some of my own frog images as well, to see what I could come up with. I think it gives it an almost polarized look at times. What do you think?

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[Julie Kenward]

Good for Andrew to point out that this is the ideal place for a polarizing filter! If you shoot a lot of water images it makes it worth it to invest in one. The glare is instantly cut when you use one and you can see much deeper into the water.

Another way to do this in PS is to play with the exposure adjustment. If you drop the offset slider down a touch to the left it will also cut some of the glare but can leave you with some bad side effects if used too strongly. What Andrew did here worked very well.

[Brendan Dozier]

Thanks everyone, much appreciated.

Joshi was right, the eye was not completely sharp to start, tried some selective sharpening, but see it could use some more.

I also like Bob's idea about darkening the leaf.

Andrew & Jules, the glare was pretty bad in the raw file, and I did try to bring it down some using levels and curves, but see it could use more. I like what you did using Viveza Andrew, and good suggestions, Jules. I just picked up Nik software, so I think I'll be experimenting some more.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I like it. Repost works well too

[Ken Childs]

Hey Brendan, I really like a shot like this where you can see above and below the water's surface. I agree that the eye need more sharpening and I would like a little more space on the right. You might try boosting the contrast on everything but the frog's head to clear up the water but since the main focus of the subject is above the surface of the water, I don't mind a little glare....this focuses attention on the frog's head.