Bee on Lantana

[Peter Farrell]

Taken 8/2/09. SonyA700, Sigma 105mm macro, f8, 1/500, iso400. PP in Elements 5, NR with neatimage
I am pleased with everthing but the wings

[Julie Brown]

Nice work Peter. I like the bee and flower detail and colors. Looks good against the green BG. Maybe a polarizer to handle the reflections on the wings and body?

[Julie Kenward]

I can see why you might not like the wings, Peter, but I do...I always like that translucent milky color - it gives them some depth to me. Only thing I can think of that could improve upon this is to have angled the camera a bit so the flower was more in the ULC and the bee heading down towards the LRC making for more of a vertical composition. And may I say dang, you nailed those reds and yellows! Beautiful saturation without going overboard...just lovely! You could take a look at desaturating the greens a bit of the high yellow color cast but that's not a big deal. You might find that by bringing the greens down in yellow the bee pops even more.

[Mike Fuhr]

Peter-- I love the colors in this photo but it looks a little soft on some areas. Maybe it's motion blur?? Did you crop this one? One other thought, you could rotate this image so the flower-bee line are on more of an angle. Really like the green background.

[Vida van der Walt]

Lovely vibrant colours and nice detail Peter. Agree on a rotation if possible.

[Stuart Frohm]

Excellent! I'm very fond on the angle from which you captured the image, plus the colors and the detail.

At first, I found the amount of space to the right of the bee a bit distracting. So I tried the attached crop, which probably is too tight.
Most respectfully,
Stu

[Peter Farrell]

Peter-- I love the colors in this photo but it looks a little soft on some areas. Maybe it's motion blur?? Did you crop this one? One other thought, you could rotate this image so the flower-bee line are on more of an angle. Really like the green background.

Mike, This is about 40% of FF. Also it was HH so you may be correct about the motion blur; my camera has 'anti-shake' built in so it may be soft for other reasons.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to comment.
Peter

[Allen Sparks]

Wonderful colors and nice catch. I think I can tell this is a significant crop as has been mentioned before. A tilt would be nice but I like it as is as well.