My apologies for being inactive for the past week, my internet connection has been down for over a week.
Im not too clued up on the names of dragonflies, so maybe someone can ID him for me. I liked the contrast in colours in this. The grey BG is OOF water.
Canon 50D
100-400 L IS USM @ 400mm
1/500
F/8
ISO 400
Wow, Stuart...I don't think I've ever seen one with these colors! It's sharp from head to tail, nicely detailed throughout (love the wings!) and the the exposure looks dead on.
My one thought is it might be nice to have a little less negative space on the right side of the image...maybe take about a third of it out. You could either go with a square crop (many people don't like these but I love them for macros as it gets you in nice and tight) or you could crop right above that lower notch on the underside of the limb and do a rectangular crop from that point. I think either of these would further strengthen the composition of a beautifully made image.
Agree with Julie about the empty space to the right of your subject Stuart,
This is a beautiful capture. your details are razor sharp and the purple/Violet tones of your subject is superb. My suggestion would be to tone down the whites in the perch just a tad...congrats...well done...:cool:
One other crop alternative would be removing from the bottom and making it more rectangular then the space to the right doesn't seem as bad !!! Withe either corp I like it a lot !!!
Julie, thanks for your constructive comment. I actually agree that maybe there is too much space on the right, and Alfred is also correct in taking off the bottom too.
Its all been pretty much said above. Good looking d-fly and beautiful background. Its good to give the critter room to fly into but this does seem a bit too much. Still very nice image. Good job!