Hi Neil: A good nature story telling image. Very well composed with the leaf vein running on a diagonal upward to the right.
You have colorful ants in Oregon, our ants are just all black and not interesting like this specie. Exposure is spot on and good sharpness.   Posted: 12/12/2024 04:45:19

I love that you were able to capture this scene. Here, you have harnessed the power of micro photography to show us something that we might have overlook otherwise. An interesting story to say the least. Kudos for this effort. The image is a bit graining, perhaps due to the cropping required to fill the image with the subjects (41 mm is not a lot of magnification so extensive cropping might have been required here). You may have been running out of information as you cropped in. This also might be due to the lower resolution that we use in our image presentations as well. I do find that the aphids due blend in with the background leaf (as they naturally do). As such their impact within the visual story is diminished some. Is there some post processing that might be applied to bring them out a bit more. Something to consider.   Posted: 12/12/2024 18:18:54

Neal...I must say, you have ants much more attractive than we do here in Texas! How you captured the ant foraging on aphids is an accomplishment! I like the rule of thirds in the position of the photo and how the vein of the leaf splits creating an "intersection" of aphid selection for the ant. Very nice capture.   Posted: 12/14/2024 00:07:43

I love it. Excellent capture and processing. This ant was probably not moving much - 1/8 sec and no motion artifact.
Your image is telling a story.
Difficult to have aphids (green) pop-out from the leaf, but this is life!
Great work   Posted: 12/16/2024 22:54:17