Dragon on the turtle

[Amol Khedgikar]

Hi All,

My First post in this wonderful forum.

I spent almost 1 hour getting close to this basking turtle on a beautiful morning. The sun had come out after a long time that day and the turtles needed the sun so didnt want to just spoil the tanning session for the turtle.... ;).

For a change I was on the right side of the sun.As I was crawling closer extremely slowly I saw this dragonfly hovering over it and I quickly focussed on the turtle hoping that the dragonfly would land on the turtle some where. to my surprise the dragonfly landed on the nose and stayed for a while.

7D, !00-400 @390mm, 5.6. ISO 400, cropped for comp sharpening and some NR.

c&c welcome , requested and appreciated.

http://gallery.photo.net/photo/15364497-lg.jpg

[Rachel Hollander]

Welcome to the wildlife forum. Nice first post. Your patience really paid off. I like the low pov and the dof. Good separation of the turtle and dragonfly from the bg too. Only nit is that there is a small dot just above and to the left of the dragonfly that may be water or may be a dust spot. Either way I would clone it out. Looking forward to more of your images.

TFS,
Rachel

[Amol Khedgikar]

Thank You Rachel, Its funny, I see it too now but I didnt notice it when I posted it...

I hope I can keep up with the high standards already set here.

[Sid Garige]

Welcome Amol. Killer image to start with in wildlife forum. Very nice techs and interesting subjects. I would go for a tighter vertical crop to maximize attention on subject. IMO turtle has a very interesting expression and I would highlight it by a tighter crop. Some thing similar to this.

[Tom Graham]

Nice light, good processing for full sunlight, color, contrast, etc. Might open/lighten the darkest (almost black) shadows if it will take it.
Love the pose of the turtle, both feet/legs forward and in view, head up, and love its eyes. Dragon fly also very nice pose. Slanting rough rock foreground interesting.
I like Sid's cropping, there may be other/better cropping possibilities??? But again, very very nice.
Tom

[Amol Khedgikar]

I LIke your crop Sid, Thanks! Just that its a little too centered for me. But I got the idea....:) It definitely added the punch that was missing in the pic.

Tom, Thank you! Pl Feel free to experiment and enlighten me.

I am a little worried about the noise around the neck and under the shell of the turtle. Any remedies?

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Amol and a warm welcome to the Wildlife forum.

As Sid said, a 'killer' opening image and so you have wetted our appetite for future postings, great to also see a different species posted on here too.

I think Sids suggestion of an alternative crop works, but perhaps slightly more off centre as you say. With you OP the crop & position also works, but would suggest cropping a tad more in, as there is a little too much space I feel to the LHS and above. Suprised you need to run some NR on the image at ISO400, however I would be interested to know if you have applied any NR to the rock/log the turtle is on, as I thought there might have been a bit more definition?

Look forward to seeing more soon.

TFS
Steve

[Ken Watkins]

What an amazingly good and different first post. I like this very much indeed the potential for cropping here is limitless, very well done:cheers: