Needham's Skimmer
This photograph was taken at the worst possible time of day; the sun here in Florida is very unforgiving unless you join the mosquitoes, early or late. However, I think it is probably my best dragonfly to date, and would be interested in your thoughts. I did take some shots with my Tokina 100mm 2,8, but somehow I do better with the Nikon 70 -300mm VR and a large crop.
D7000, 1/500s, f4, ISO 400, edited almost exclusively in ACR
Last edited by John Chardine; 09-13-2012 at 07:56 AM.
Hi Gillie- This looks very nice, almost like a painting. Not sure how you got that effect. I like the wing position and colours (despite the light you say you had). I do see some small jpeg artefacts around the animal. You should be able to save an image of this size with a reasonably high jpeg quality and still come in under the 250kb BPN limit.
Very nice indeed! I am loving the overall sharpness and dof as well as the strange but very beautiful color palette. Did you do anything special to get that color palette?
Good comments above love the sharpness but a bit tight for me on the right. Consider moving the subject from the middle of the frame moreover a change in composition. I like the background colors and angles,..wish it was a bit muted but on balance well done. The composition suggestion is subject,.. just an option to consider - really like the shot.
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 09-13-2012 at 01:19 PM.
Thank you all for the comments and suggestions. I wish I could tell you the formula for the colours; the sun was very bright and this fellow really looked golden. I think I played with the colour sliders in ACR, until I got the golden effect that I remembered. There were others about, but they were a more orange variety.
Hello Gillie, I am interested in knowing how you arrived at the exposure for this image. I find the shutter speed to be way low for the aperture, ISO, and amount of light. At the very least, I would suggest bringing the highlights down considerably, as they are too bright and take away from the overall look of the image. Keep in mind that the eye follows light, and when the brightest areas are not on the subject then the eye is drawn away from it which is not what we want. I would also suggest cropping a little looser, as the crop feels tight to me. Nikon glass is always going to look better on your Nikon body than after-market glass, so no surprises there. I'm sure the relative cost will reflect that thinking.
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Please visit me on the web at http://kerryperkinsphotography.com
Thank you Kerry, for the comment and suggestions. The ISO was a senior moment; I had been shooting juvenile ibis in the shade, and clear forgot to change it. I was trying to find a shallow dof, whilst still getting as much as possible of the insect in focus, and was relying on the metering in the viewfinder to prevent me from clipping any part of it. No doubt that was fooled by the ISO too. I see exactly what you mean by toning the highlights down. To me, it looked like a golden ornament sitting in the grass, and I think I carried that thought through to the processing. I will go back and do it all again, and hope to learn by my mistakes
Gillie, we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes! My simplest method of checking my work is to search on Google Images for my subject and compare my image with the best ones that I see there.
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Please visit me on the web at http://kerryperkinsphotography.com
Oh this is so beautiful. Congratulations. I'm surprised that at F4 the whole fly is in focus. Do you remember where you focused?
Thank you
Reza, thank you for your recent comments and suggestions. I think the reason that all this dragonfly is in focus, is that I was using a 70-300mm lens and the creature was quite small in the frame. Focusing on it therefore encompassed the entire body, whilst getting some good dof as his piece of grass was well out from the background. Enlarging the dragonfly did cause a bit of noise, which I smoothed out in ACR. Gillie
Gillie; I loved the image overall. What really struck me was the metallic sheen coming from the dragonfly and perch. The wing position provides a nice frame for the head.
Thanks for the dragonfly.
Elizabeth
Thank you, Elizabeth
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