Taken at sunset so to get a good DOF I used a small aperture and a slow shutter speed. I placed the caterpillar on the leaf. I edited the shot considerably to get rid of the bright reflection off the leaf but the overall picture quality suffered as a result I think. In hind sight I would wash the leaf and take the picture in brighter light.
Statistics
Place: 16 out of 240 Avg (all users): 6.3365 Avg (commenters): 7.6154 Avg (participants): 6.1504 Avg (non-participants): 6.4422 Views since voting: 1427 Views during voting: 433 Votes: 312 Comments: 15 Favorites: 2 (view)
COMPOSITION The first thing that grabs me is the use of leading diagonal lines, drawing my eye gently to the upper right. How'd you get the bug to pose so perfectly?? It's a great image for the challenge, IMO, because there are several distinct levels of pattern to occupy me; the fine detail of the leaf, the broader patterns of the major veins, and then the interesting camouflage patterns of the bug caterpillar itself. I also think you showed an outstanding sense of how to crop the image.
TECHNIQUE Great color saturation on the leaf, but the dark tones of the insect are a little disappointing. I'd have liked to see the same level of detail in his skin, but it appears a little softer than the detail in the leaf. I'm assuming that with f22, you were attempting to buy yourself the greatest depth possible given your closeness to the subject. I wonder if you struggled with this when shooting or editing? It's been said many times in the forums, but I'll repeat here, we love to see your own thoughts in the photographer's comments section. It would have been nice to know what you were thinking as you shot this, what lens was used, etc. Having said all that, I do think this is a technically excellent image.
OVERALL IMPACT As I said above, your use of leading lines really makes this image work. It's so much more effective this way than a simple caterpillar sitting on a leaf. Your eye for detail made this one work. Your score was well above average, but I think would have scored even higher if you had preserved the same level of detail in the caterpillar that you did in the leaf.
Most commenters really liked the image, and your score reflects this. A great job but I bet that added detail would have added to the wow factor and a consequent bump in score. I enjoyed studying this image for the critique. Keep shooting!
Great macro....excellent composition of the pattern on pattern. Love the coloring and pattern of the catepillar in particular. Wish you had been able to clean the leaf up a bit but what are you going to do. Excellent.
This little guy carries around the german flag on his back lol....neat picture, would have maybe liked a little bit more from a slightly lower angle, but you recieved a 7
Excellent. The two patterns go well together. The color contrast is great as well as the framing. To bad there is this blueish tint going on, but this is basic editing so I won't hold it against you ;). 9
6 - Nice cropping/symmetry/composition. Criticism; could be a result of too tight a crop/zoom, but the quality seems to have degraded here, and is one of the first things that I noticed (or could just be blur/focal issues), so perhaps more zoom out (depending what you had to work with) to try to achieve that 'quality', may have made this better in my opinion. May also be the result of post processing too, who knows.
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