Jason Stewart
About the Image(s)
On one of the rare sunny and warmer days during this quarantine I sat in the yard with my macro lens next to the crocus flowers. Honey bees were frequenting them. It took about two hours while laying on my stomach to capture a hand full of decent shots. First I tried auto focus but it didnt work well. So worked at anticipating where they would land next and pre-focused my lens.
Canon 1DXii, Tamron 90mm Macro 1/8000 sec. f/4 90mm, ISO 8000
This round’s discussion is now closed!
9 comments posted
IMO, two distractions to my eyes. 1 the grass blade with highlights and the other is purple flower in the extreme left. I am not distracted much by the small purple flower on bottom right though.
This may just be a bit of nit picking point while I totally understand how hard it is too get such an action oriented subject.
Nothing else to add. Great image.   Posted: 05/03/2020 16:05:35
Background are as important to an image as the subject itself and that is true in this case. While the subject is dominate the many colored distractions around the perimeter of frame offer too many distractions. I would suggest a bit of Photoshop surgery to clean up some of these distractions.
I've attached an example.   Posted: 05/05/2020 08:50:53
There are three areas of detail that caught my attention. 1. Lack of sharpness of the flower. Lack of sharpness to the body of the bee, 3. when enlarged, I can count the pixels. I would attribute this to your aperture at f/4. If this were enlarged for print, it would realy be degraded by the noise. A smaller aperture f/8-f/11, would have likely brought in more detail in the foreground leaving your background still with bokah to blend in. Very nice natural light and the contrast with the shadows and light are nicely compensated. I would concur with Michael, that the noise could be caused by the high ISO.
Shooting these close-up shots is a definite challenge. I know, take a look at my previous image from August 2019 of the bee I shot and cropped. Not an easy feat.   Posted: 05/09/2020 13:12:00
  Posted: 05/09/2020 13:52:46
Yes, I agree with Richard, any capture of a moving object in macro is a winning day! The bee capture is excellent, and I like the composition. I do really like Larry's modifications. A much cleaner image. Really well done.   Posted: 05/13/2020 16:12:08