dragonfly

[Celeste Painter]

5dm2, sigma 180 f3.5 macro, speedlite offcamera w/ softbox
handheld, manual focus
manual exposure, iso 200, 1/200 @ f22, external e-ttl w/ evaluative metering and ev -1/3
post-processing in lightroom: crop, some curve adjustments, slight sharpening

Struggling a bit with flash settings and for some reason, this image looks a lot better (more "brilliant" ??) on my own monitor than in the picasa web album--I haven't had that issue w/ all photos, just some of them. Not sure why (upload settings are the same). Any critique is most welcome.

[Allen Sparks]

Celeste, this is a nice species you selected with the barred wings. The head on view works for me. However, the fence is dominating this image as it takes up so much of the image and is not really the subject or the BG. If you could have achieved more of a level even with the dragonfly and included much less of the fence that would have worked better IMO.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Celeste. Allen has given you some excellent suggestions above. Nice use of the diffused flash and the background looks good. At f/22 you might be losing a little sharpness to diffraction (you could do some testing with your setup to see if there is a noticeable difference between f/16 and f/22 - for my macro lenses there is). For my tastes, I'd like to see just a bit more room on the left where the wing is almost touching the frame. Keep them coming!