Nikon D70s + Nikkor 105mm f2.8 VR micro, hand held, no flash used.
(happens to be from one of my older archives & hence i do not have the EXIF data to share. sorry about that)
I like everything about this including and especially the curled leaf and the placement of the subject. I like the hot spots on the edge of the leaf for some unkown reason; I think that they actually add something to the otherwise dark image.
later and love, artie
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I pretty much agree with the other comments -- a wonderful photo of a very interesting subject! If I were forced to find a nit to pick, it would be those two tiny bright spots on the edge of the leaf.
I wanted to offer a general suggestion for dealing with such small overly bright spots in images. I hope you don't mind, but I did this on your image to illustrate the result. In a nutshell, it's to fill or cover up the too-bright areas with a nearby light color from the image, so they aren't flat white. In Photoshop, select the overexposed areas -- the magic wand tool works well for this, with a small threshold. Feather the selection slightly. Add a new, empty layer, then add a layer mask to it; the selection will become the mask. Temporarily hide the new layer and go back to the main image layer. Use the eyedropper to pick a color from near the bright spot -- something that will look natural when used to fill the too-bright area. Make the added (still empty) new layer visible and active, and use the paint bucket tool to fill the layer with the color you just picked. Set the layer's blending mode to Color, and back off the opacity until it looks right. You can then spot-darken the bright areas if they're still distracting. Here's the result.
Chris
Last edited by Chris Starbuck; 01-06-2008 at 10:46 PM.