I was motivated to submit this image after seeing Julie's "Cow Killer" in the macro forum.
This is one huge wasp! I have photos showing its entire body and how large it is, but the head angle/eye contact just isn't as dead-on as it is in this image.
This wasp is large enough that without a macro lens, you can still see the spines on its legs plus it is able to paralyze and carry a cicada back to its burrow. And apparently, from my sister's accounts, if you get too close to its burrow, it will chase you down. This wasp was sitting in my dill patch, weighing down 4 heads of dill flowers! The adults eat nectar, the larvae are carnivores..... hence the reason for parents able to hunt down and bring home cicadas! Also from my sister's personal experience, on a scale of 1 to 10, it's stings rate a 12.
After learning about this wasp, I decided if I ever see these again, I will not be walking up close to get any more photos. This set of photos is it, even though it is not as sharp as it would have been with a macro lens. So I would appreciate any suggestions for when I come upon other large bugs. lol
Cheryl, I love the story for this image, thanks for sharing it. What a face on this guy, great colors and background and I'm wondering how it would look if you rotated it and made a different crop? I keep tilting my head looking at it. Again, thanks for posting this one.
Hi Cheryl. I had a wasp picture that was thought to be a Cicada Killer, but turned out to be a paper wasp. After reading your story of how aggressive this one is, I'm glad mine wasn't - because I almost ran over it in my kayak!
I see the focus wound up a little behind his head - but those eyes are still quite amazing! Also, I really like the dill for his perch, and background - it's an interesting shape and color, and I like the way it looks blurred out in the background.
He must be a pretty big bug to bend the dill over like that! Yikes!
Hi Cheryl,
I like your composition, The first order of business is the eyes. The focal point is not on the eyes; its to the right on the leg. In these types of macro images, it is imperative that the eyes are in focus. The over hanging background fower is a bit distracting, taking the attention from the wasp. I modified your image as follows: I cloned out the flower and selective sharpened the eyes, and gave you just a tad of saturation...hope you like...:cool:
I like it much better without the extra flower cluster in the ulc. I noticed the eyes were not as sharp, I guess I was getting a bit nervous when seeing a wasp staring me down like this one was, and obviously I wasn't paying enough attention/time on the focusing. nice job, Gus. thanks.
Hey Cheryl, believe it or not I ran into one of these last weekend at a local lake. When I came home and found it in my insect book I was plenty happy it didn't get after me, either!
I went in another direction with your image. I selected the entire head/body (excluding the wings) and did some sharpening. Gus is right that the eyes were soft but I thought the whole front of the body was as well. I also ran some noise reduction because, despite this being a pretty light toned image, there is some noise there - probably from a large crop?
I also played with the saturation but I took it down a step instead of up. I thought it looked a little too saturated - go figure!
I kept the top flower in but I think it would be less distracting if you had caught the entire flower in the composition instead of half...I think that's what keeps drawing my eye up there. Live and learn, eh?
One thing you might look at is converting this to a black and white. I popped it into lab mode to do my sharpening and clicked on the lightness channel and it is pretty awesome as a black and white!
The final version sure hits the spot Need detail to make these images work. That is one funky looking bug !! Love how you place it toward one of the corners !!! Excellent !!!
Cicada Killer
