The Aptly Named Fly!

[Jon Rista]

A few weeks back I took a hike, one I really shouldn't have taken, up Waterton Canyon in Colorado. The hike up to the dam on the Platte River is 6.5 miles in along Waterton Canyon, so a full 13 mile hike in a day. I'd hiked the first day I had an EF 300mm f/2.8 L II IS from LensRentals.com, hoping to find some birds, and eventually at the top photograph the herds of bighorn sheep (the icon of Waterton). Within the first couple of miles I found a huge variety of insect life feeding among these bunches of small yellow flowers (not sure what species the plant is.) At first it looked like there was a variety of bumble bees, including one huge very orange one. It wasn't until I got home that I realized it wasn't a bumble bee, but the biggest, nastiest fly I had ever seen! My first thought, given how it lazily cruised around the flowers, was "Biker Fly"! It has that gruff, tough, hardcore look to it. It several days of research to finally learn its true name: The Hedgehog Fly. An apt name, for all its spikes. Official name is Spiny Tachina Fly, and scientific name is Paradejenia rutilioides.

Exposure
1/160s @ f/8
ISO 800
0 EC

Camera
Canon 7D with 600mm
- Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L II IS
- Canon EF 2x TC III

Time and Location
8/24/2012 1:30 pm
2 - 3 miles into Waterton Canyon

Processing
Highlight recovery, shadow boost, clarity. About 50% crop. Compositionally, I don't really like the leaf that stretches behind the fly's lower wing. This guy was hard to keep a focus lock on, and this was the sharpest shot out of the bunch. I guess you work with what you have.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Jon and welcome to the Macro forum! This is a cool looking fly! You captured a good pose and you have excellent sharpness within your DOF. I also like the even light and the clean background. The leaf at the bottom, that you mentioned, is not bothering me. I would suggest toning down some of the bright spots on the plant - particularly near the top of the frame, and you might consider cropping a little from the left. This is a very nice first post and I hope to see more of your macro work!

[Jon Rista]

Thanks, Steve! I agree about the highlights. I'll see what I can do to reduce them. Those yellow flowers started out pretty bright, and just kept getting brighter as I increased contrast. Not sure what to do about them.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Jon, this is an impressive fly! I think you made the best out of the situation! Very good sharpness where it counts and great details. I'd try to tone down the highlights on the head and thorax a little. Here I used the highlights corrections to reduce the brightness of the flowers and the burn tool (burning highlights and midtones) to tone down the highlights on the fly. You could also use the burn tool to get rid of the bright spots in the BG without affecting the brightness of the other flowers. Hope you don't mind me fiddling with your image.

[Jon Rista]

Hi Jerry. I have no problems at all with you "fiddling". ;) On the contrary, I appreciate the time you've taken to tweak it to provide feedback. :) And it is indeed one heck of a fly! It's hard to give an accurate sense of scale in a macro photo, but if you think of the size of a large bumble bee...this guy was larger!

I'll have to rework the image a little bit. I noticed that I had a fairly sharp tone curve in Lightroom (4.1) for the highlights half of the curve. I'd already pulled down the highlights slider 100% to tone down the flowers (which were a very light yellow and bright white originally.) I'll do some work on those background flower highlights as well, and repost.

[Bob Miller]

Jon...This is an impressive macro image with good dof esp for f8.....I would add a hue sat adjustment layer in pS and take down the saturation and possibly the luminance of the yellows. You might also consider cropping the two bright spots from the top edge of the image. Looking forward to seeing more of your work!

[Jon Rista]

Thanks much, Bob! :) I might try a sat adjustment layer in PS. I've been reworking it in Lightroom (where I try to do most of my work, as popping out to PS complicates my library management), and I think the version I have now is much better, although those yellows are still pretty vibrant.

I should double stress that this really isn't a "true" macro photo taken with a 1:1 macro lens. If it was, I would have probably needed a much smaller aperture, or would have needed to use focus stacking. I've taken to using my telephoto lenses with teleconverters attached (to gain extra magnification with the same MFD) to capture photos like these. I find it makes it easier to blur out the background, keep the aperture relatively wide, and still capture a lot of detail. It would probably best be called "close-up" photography, but I like to call it pseudo-macro photography myself. ;) The use of a high end Canon SuperTelephoto lens like the EF 300mm f/2.8 L II and 2x TC III really helps with the sharpness, for sure.