This image scored pretty well in the challenge, largely down to your colours and a most excellent title.
I'm going to be a little harsh in my critique here, so hold onto your hat! I feel it is important to do so because you have nailed the overall composition and some different technical choices would have turned what I think is a poor macro shot into a really good one - you've already done the hard stuff; you deserve a better outcome!
First of all, I don't know how much macro experience you have so I apologise if I'm about to tell you stuff you already know. I've spent hours using my specialist macro equipment and know how hard it is. Technical considerations are so important.
First off, look at your aperture, f/5.6 gives you way too small a depth of field to have any hope of catching the bee, you've given yourself about 5mm of depth of field, anything outside that will be blurred. Nice bee, lovely flowers and what do we get? The bees butt! Something like f/16 on the same shot and I suspect you'd have given us a lot more. I wouldn't advise a much slower shutter speed for this shot, so you may have needed to push the ISO a bit to make this work.
In terms of processing, the highlights on the petals seem to be robbed of detail, I don't know what software you have access to but recovering the highlights would have got you something back here. Also, various filters that enhance tonal contrast would have pulled out extra detail in these areas.
Overall, this is a shot that benefits from very fine composition and colouring but one that could have been a whole lot better with a different set up.
Best regards
Paul
Thanks for the critique. I don't have much experience on macro, so I welcome all your comments. These would help me a lot. Thanks again.
This image scored pretty well in the challenge, largely down to your colours and a most excellent title.
I'm going to be a little harsh in my critique here, so hold onto your hat! I feel it is important to do so because you have nailed the overall composition and some different technical choices would have turned what I think is a poor macro shot into a really good one - you've already done the hard stuff; you deserve a better outcome!
First of all, I don't know how much macro experience you have so I apologise if I'm about to tell you stuff you already know. I've spent hours using my specialist macro equipment and know how hard it is. Technical considerations are so important.
First off, look at your aperture, f/5.6 gives you way too small a depth of field to have any hope of catching the bee, you've given yourself about 5mm of depth of field, anything outside that will be blurred. Nice bee, lovely flowers and what do we get? The bees butt! Something like f/16 on the same shot and I suspect you'd have given us a lot more. I wouldn't advise a much slower shutter speed for this shot, so you may have needed to push the ISO a bit to make this work.
In terms of processing, the highlights on the petals seem to be robbed of detail, I don't know what software you have access to but recovering the highlights would have got you something back here. Also, various filters that enhance tonal contrast would have pulled out extra detail in these areas.
Overall, this is a shot that benefits from very fine composition and colouring but one that could have been a whole lot better with a different set up.
For me the yellows are a little too much, they don't look natural. And it would have been better to have the bee's eyes in focus. Nice composition though.
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
