Say Hello to My Little Friend...

[John Storjohann]

A tip of the hat to Andrew on this one...the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this little guy sitting on the pad was Andrew's work with frogs and Fractalius. 100-400mm@400mm, f/5.6@1/400. Cropped in LR; did some clean up work in PS, then added a layer of Simplify in the Color Blend mode, a layer of Fractalius at a lowered opacity, brushed the eye back in a bit, and then used Topaz->Detail on a layer and tweaked it a bit.

[Kerry Perkins]

John, is his name Tony? I like the treatment. He seems to blend into the lily pad. The frac layer looks good, I'm not crazy about the bright area in the LRC. Maybe you could use the replace color tool or something? Love that green on the face.

[John Storjohann]

Kerry, a good point...I've never used that feature before, I'll have to look into the use and attempt it. Cloudy day, beautiful, even lighting..but a lousy color to the water surrounding the pad. On a laptop right now...will attempt when I'm back on my desktop. Thank you for the view and comment!

[denise ippolito]

John, Love the title! Good suggestion by Kerry. Wonderful work with the filter!

[John Storjohann]

Thank you Denise. Kerry, I re-worked the image from scratch.... I read up on color replacement...thank you for the tip!...and ended up sampling one of the colors in the water on the pad and using that for replacement. Did a bit of touch-up around the pad as well. We'll see how it holds up!

[denise ippolito]

I like it better.

[Cheryl Slechta]

John, I like the repost better but I think it would be better without the water drop at all if that is possible. It probably looked great on the original but I think it loses something in Fractalius.

[John Storjohann]

Cheryl, thank you for chiming in! It's probably possible...not easy, but possible! ... but in this instance, I like the element it adds...it will be interesting to see what others say.

[Anita Bower]

Cute little frog. I don't know how people manage to photograph them. Good job! I like the placement of the frog, the brown and green colors, including the green on the frog. Nice fractilus work. I vote for eliminating the water drop, or the light colors of it and the water. I wold prefer them to be green. The light colors are distracting and it is not clear to me when viewing what they are. Otherwise, great work.

[John Storjohann]

Anita, I've never seen anything quite like the frogs that day...I was on a shoot with two former students (I've been a teacher for 33+ years) and I took them down to the Botanical Gardens and then over to a city park that will sometimes have water lilies in bloom. While we were there, we started to notice literally dozens of frogs on and around the pads (no blooms!)...and they weren't concerned in the least with our presence. We had a blast, and the frogs were something of the icing on the cake.

[Anita Bower]

Anita, I've never seen anything quite like the frogs that day...I was on a shoot with two former students (I've been a teacher for 33+ years) and I took them down to the Botanical Gardens and then over to a city park that will sometimes have water lilies in bloom. While we were there, we started to notice literally dozens of frogs on and around the pads (no blooms!)...and they weren't concerned in the least with our presence. We had a blast, and the frogs were something of the icing on the cake.

A pleasant surprise!

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi John, sorry for being late to the party, just got back from a few days up north photographing more Bullfrogs Love the fract work on this female. I prefer the repost. I don't mind the bright section in front of the frog caused by the water encroaching on the leaf due to the frog's weight. It does add another element. The easiest way to eliminate it would be a lower shooting angle at time of capture. Hope to see more frog posts form this day!