Hi Xiao: Am not an expert in insect identification, however I think your colorful subject is possibly in the Beetle family. If you go on line you will find pictures of many very colorful Beetles. In our region they are usually black and not very showy.
In your photo the Beetle is mostly very sharp in detail and presented on a slight diagonal which is good. With the macro equipment used you did as well as possible in your presentation of this interesting beetle.

For your picture to have maximum impact the yellow flower would need to be totally in focus. Using your 105 macro lens with 2X converter with aperture set at f/16 and at this magnification your depth of field is very shallow, the law of optics.

In order to achieve mostly total sharpness on both the insect and flower you would need to revert to photo stacking. We have members in group #63 that are experts at this process which is quite detailed, Charlie our administrator, then Neil is an expert on insects and also several others can provide you with details on this process.

Your soft green out of focus background supports the subject well.

  Posted: 02/09/2025 18:40:57

Great capture of this bug on the yellow bloom. I think that your selected focus works quite well with this image. The bug is nicely shown, as is the most interesting parts of the bloom. One thing that happens in these types of images is that we get overly fixated upon some parts of the image, look past other bit more problematic sections. Perhaps that is occurring here. In the image, the yellow bloom looks a bit overexposed such that we are losing a lot of the native detail here that you worked so hard to capture. I do find that the blurry bloom peeking out from behind the lower right quadrant of the main bloom is a bit distracting and is not needed to further your story here. Finally, there are a lot specular highlights on the bug that detracts from the look. Assuming that this image is not being submitted into a competition division that excludes pixel deletion or movement, we can easily address each of these points. The bloom yellow exposure can be reduced and micro contrast (using the texture and clarity slider some in ACR) can be adjusted to bring out much of the native detail and structure. The blurry background bloom can be cloned out and the specular highlights within the bug can be lessened or removed (the Photoshop "remove" tool worked well here). These edits serve to remove some of the distractions within the image and yields a cleaner, and to my eye, more effective presentation. I have included a version of this image with these suggestions to illustrate my thoughts. See what you think.   Posted: 02/10/2025 19:32:47

Hi Xiao,
I believe that this is a Milkweed Bug (Asclepias Syriaca). These bugs will be seen in great numbers all over the open Milkweed pods (seen in my area normally in October - Buffalo/NY).
I agree with the comments above. The specular lights could be avoided by using a flash diffuser, or simply using the natural light. One needs to be careful not to increase the f/stop too much as diffraction issues, not seen here, could affect the sharpness. I like the slight blur on the bloom while the bug is in good focus.
Well done.
  Posted: 02/14/2025 21:44:08