Taken at the botanic gardens on cloudy morning. I like how the bee turned out, but there was a bit of wind, so had slight blur to some parts of flower. Crop, cloned out some stems & flower on both sides, ACR, CS5, NR.
7D, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM +2.0x, HH
1/200
8.0
ISO 800
Lovely looking bee. I like the slight head turn. Focus is spot on. BG and flower look fine. Good for you to get a nice hand held shot with a neat combo.
The bee looks excellent Brendan. Of course if the flower was as sharp as the bee this image would be superb. Nonetheless I like it alot. The BG is really good.
Hi Brendan,
Really like the colors, the oof b/g and the Bee is awesome!!! I especially like the eye contact. I would be tempted to tone down the sat and h/l a bit in the flower/stem if it where mine. It's pretty dominant in the frame and it keeps pulling my eye to it. Other than my nit picking good capture.
Thanks very much, Dave, Jack, Susan, and Stuart, much appreciated.
Susan, I think you are right - there is a bit of competition between the two, dropped down the saturation of flower. Good call!
Stuart, I do seem to use my 70-200 as a macro often, even though I had my macro lens right next to me, just too caught up in the moment I guess (or too lazy to switch lenses)
Hi Brendan. You captured an outstanding pose with very nice light and good sharpness. The clean background and slight diagonal of the flower are also pluses. The tweaks in the repost make the image even stronger. This is very well done!
Brendan, great details on the bee and an overall nice image! For me, it feels a little unbalanced. I would have liked to have seen a little less negative space at the top and a bit more stem at the bottom. I added some canvas to the bottom to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. When a flower has a large head like this one, cutting the stem too short gives it a more "square" feel. Adding that bit of length to the bottom reproportions it a bit better IMO.
Thanks, Jules, and good point regarding stem & space - I see what you mean. I have a tendency to go too square on a lot of my crops, have to make more of an effort to avoid that.
Hey Brendan, the OP looked good and Jules' repost definitely fits my tastes better. I think some selective sharpening on the flower, especially the dark purple areas would go a long way in improving this already fine image.