My dad found this little guy (he is about 1 inch long) in his backyard a few weeks ago and took some pictures. The last time I was over there we looked but couldn't find him again. Just a couple of days ago my dad spotted him and put him in a jar just so I could take a few pics.
I cut a red rose from our bush and set it on a little table outside (away from the cats). I got the tripod, camera, and AB400 (shooting through a white umbrella) all set up. I then carefully placed the mantis on the rose and started shooting. This was the best of about 30 shots.
Shot in RAW: adjusted white balance and exposure, exported to a 16 bit tiff, tone mapped in Photomatix (for some reason I really like the look of tone mapped red roses)
PS:
NI
Crop
Curves
Hue/Sat
Dodge/burn all over the place
Some selective saturation on the mantis
A bit of cloning here and there
A bit of vignetting
Resize
USM
Save for web
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The back end may be a bit "hot" but the detail of the foreground and the velvety goodness of those petals, combiend with the outstanding red/green contrast all make up for that hot spot.
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