We seemed to have had a mantis nest somewhere under our porch as I have been finding these tiny little baby manti around. This guy here is not much longer than the diameter of a quarter. I picked up the flowers in case I wanted to shoot one for burst of color. This was taken outside on my back porch with trees as the background. The mantis was pretty helpful with his pose as he let me put him basically where I wanted and the stayed put. I shot numerous pics of him with a variety of lenses - this one using my Sigma 70-300 in macro mode which gave me the real shallow DOF and turned my treed background into basically nothing.. Not as sharp as I would have liked. Advanced edit would have been nice.
PP - RAW conversion, numerous selective color adjustments which helped the colors pop (the center of the flower shoudl have been yellow but I wanted the mantis more green so I had to choose which was more important, and the background blended to black nice) NI a couple of times, USM several times, various levels and saturation adjustments, save for web, USM and border.
I haver this shot up at Fotofight and Eyefetch, both scoring around a 7.2 or so. Which usually means that this will score a high 5 here. But 27 votes in I am sitting on a 7.04. Lets see how it ends.
Post ChallengeWhooh Hooh! Didnt expect this to score the best of all three sites. I took 2nd place at fotofight with a 7.1 and 6th place at eyefetch with a 7.0. Thank you for all the votes and comments. If you are interested in readxing a stroy of my mantis go here - Long Story about Me and Manti
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 286 Avg (all users): 7.2604 Avg (commenters): 8.2800 Avg (participants): 7.1250 Avg (non-participants): 7.3281 Views since voting: 12620 Views during voting: 317 Votes: 192 Comments: 71 Favorites: 24 (view)
That's my boy! As your mom, Tim, I have always enjoyed the new 'pets' you brought into the house - the snakes, the tarantulas, the newts, the turtles, the hamsters (all named Hester), the mice to feed the snakes, the anoles, the crickets to feed whomever. All the animals, and you, continue to create so many smiles. You warm my heart. Congratulations on your Blue Ribbon!
That's my boy! As your mom, Tim, I have always enjoyed the new 'pets' you brought into the house - the snakes, the tarantulas, the newts, the turtles, the hamsters (all named Hester), the mice to feed the snakes, the anoles, the crickets to feed whomever. All the animals, and you, continue to create so many smiles. You warm my heart. Congratulations on your Blue Ribbon!
The only border that works I've seen so far in this challenge. Very nice shot, though maybe a touch more dof could have improved it. Great composition.
Love it! I'm a HUGE mantis fan and you've done a superb job of capturing this wonderful creature. Into my favorites it goes; and yes- a 10 all the way:)
how awesome are you & this photograph... I love this soooooooooo much.. The pink color against the green is perfect & I love your choice of border.. 10
Excellent image. That mantis really pops off the pink flower and the black background is perfect. Nice touch with the thin pink boarder. I think this could easily ribbon.
Caught in Prayer
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