A nice face shot, Ian. Good sharpness and comp. A few small tweaks would make this even better. I would suggest cloning the dark spot in the background along the top of the frame and the lighter spot in the background between the grasshopper's head and the leaf as these tend to draw my eye away from your subject. You might aslo carefully clone out some of the flash-generated specular highlights in the leaves. :)
Hi Ian, great subject, especially when out of birds! I like the details you've captured on the hopper. I am a bit distracted from the subject by all the hairy plant material. I can imagine the image improving by the suggestions on the BG above.
I like the suggestions given but would also add that by going with a vertical presentation you'd eliminate most of the distraction in the URC. What would be left could then easily be cloned away, leaving that wonderful face staring back at us!
That critter looks soooo pleasant! But my suggestion would be to clone out both the light green area above it and the harry leaf on the upper right side. Both arguably take some of the attention away from that most interesting face. But TFS!
Hey Ian, suggestions on all the stuff surrounding the 'hopper have already been made so I'll offer a couple on the bug itself. I think giving this a bit of a contrast boost would make it pop more and I also think doing some work on the eyes would be a good thing. Try selecting them and upping the contrast a lot. Normally I would suggest that you sharpen them but I don't think that's really necessary on these eyes. You'll probably have to tone down the catchlights after doing this but lightly brushing over them should be easy to do.
Thanks everyone for your critiques. I've worked on it a bit -- what do you think? Removed the offending dark and light spots, added some contrast to the eyes, and did a bit of a crop making it a bit more vertical.
Last edited by Ian Cassell; 08-28-2010 at 07:24 PM.