Ruth Mayer
July 2026 - Ladybugs
About the Image(s)
I have this 90 mm macro from OM Systems and was going around my yard looking for bugs. Didn’t find many so I went to my local garden store and purchased some ladybugs. They were in a small tub with some wood shavings. I think it was about $12.00. I turned them loose in my roses including the wood shavings. I took lots of pictures with the 90 mm and the OM1 Mark 2 (1/50sec. f/13, ISO 200, manual mode). I used a flash and a diffuser and bracketed with just three shots. The ladybugs were happy to get out of the tub and they moved quickly. I took a lot of photos of the bugs, and this one I liked. The wood shaving show on the back.
4 comments posted
A wonderful shot of these critters in a natural setting. I love the interaction between the bugs and the leaf that they are on. Great composition, exposure, color and sharpness. There are a few minor points that I might suggest addressing. I would remove the 3 sensor spots (or specular highlights) on the foreground leaf. I also don't think that the fibers or hairs that we see within the image (in several places) are also needed here to tell your story. I might also suggest removing the brighter and distracting triangle on the right base of the larger leaf. Finally, I noticed that since the right side of the background is so dark relative to the left side, the presentation has a bit of an unbalanced feel. Here I might suggest darkening the leaf (foreground and background) on the left size. To balance out the background. Yes, this de-emphasizes the left leaf a bit, but not to the detriment of your vision or to the image's look and feel. While these are minor points, I feel that these will bring this image "to the next level". I have included a version of this image to illustrate my thoughts here. See what you think … Posted: 07/08/2026 21:47:22
Thank you, I really appreciate the time you spent on my photo. I didn't notice the hairs. and cropping more of the black out really works. Posted: 07/12/2026 21:42:04
Hi Ruth:
You did yourself well on this Ladybug shot.
The only change I would make to this picture is to crop about half off the right side and make a vertical format. As is there is far too much black area that is not working for you. The vertical format would work great on the Ladybugs Posted: 07/09/2026 04:04:55
You did yourself well on this Ladybug shot.
The only change I would make to this picture is to crop about half off the right side and make a vertical format. As is there is far too much black area that is not working for you. The vertical format would work great on the Ladybugs Posted: 07/09/2026 04:04:55
Thanks, that makes more sense. Posted: 07/12/2026 21:42:34