Dragonfly

[Jonathan Ashton]

Canon 7D Canon 180mm macro& 1.4TC 1/400 sec f11

All C & C welcome.

[Nick Palmieri]

Nice capture and BG. I think I would take a little off the right side. Debating on the sharpness of the head???

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Jonathan,
I think you should try another round of USM on the head area. The BG appears a bit noisy so either some NR or surface blur to tame that. I generally like tighter comps.......so could go tighter for my tastes but I do know that you like looser ones.......so that works for me too. A few minor tweaks will make this shine!

[Jay Sheinfield]

Agree on a slice off the left..otherwise wonderful capture. Great colors.

[Don Lacy]

Hi Jonathan, Wonderful color on this guy and nice OOF BG I agree with the others on taken some off the left and I would also crop up from the bottom of the frame to make the perch less dominate. Where was this taken and do you know which species because it sure looks a lot like a male Scarlet Skimmer to me.

[Brendan Dozier]

Awesome dragonfly capture, Jonathon. Nice colors and detail. Interesting pose with wings forward, and like the opposing diagonal angles of the body and perch. Though I like the room and off center center crop, might take just a bit of rt. side. Nicely done!

[Dave Leroy]

Very well done.

Nice simple and straight forward composition shows off the dragon fly to advantage.

I am also on the crop side including a slice off bottom.

In hindsight and assuming you were on a tripod, a bit more dof and less ss may have been nice as well.

It makes one think of summer days.

Dave

[Marcin Biskupek]

I don't know why but the tail of this dragonfly looks like if would be cutted from another photo and pasted here...sharp edges and dark border around, but it's just my feeling. Perhaps vertical frame would give nicer effect?? I like details on wings very much.

[Ken Childs]

Hey Jon, great color here and a very nice pose. I really like the wing shadows on the perch! Some great suggestions have already been given and I would add that if this were mine, I'd give a shot at toning down or removing the highlights on the abdomen.

[Grady Weed]

Don Lacey echos my thoughts here. Nice color, good details and nice head angle.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks very much everyone, much appreciated. The image has not been modified other than usual levels shadows highlights etc. I have a confession to make that may account for some reservations expressed by Marcin, I original posted a bird image by mistake so I hastily found a dragonfly and posted that but for some reason it was 203K so I hastily re-saved it at 195K in case I got timed out, so it is a compressed compressed image.

[Ken Childs]

That explains the difference between the original title and the one that showed up inside the post.

[Jonathan Ashton]

That explains the difference between the original title and the one that showed up inside the post.

Just testin making sure you are on the ball