My son caught this toad at soccer practice so I thought he'd be a good subject to photograph, that is if he kept still! As the toad was dark against the white I raised the exposure compensation slightly, it helped. Thanks to burning I could remove distracting highlights, I dodged highlights in the eyes. Cloned some odd specks here and there. Used hue and saturation, levels, usm, cropped slightly to make the subject perfectly center, resized and ran through neat image (I don't know how I managed without neat image, much better than the sharpening photoshop offers) The toad is in the garden, happy and unharmed.
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 240 Avg (all users): 7.3218 Avg (commenters): 8.7826 Avg (participants): 7.0965 Avg (non-participants): 7.7500 Views since voting: 9127 Votes: 174 Comments: 49 Favorites: 34 (view)
This is a really wonderful image. Thank you for all the info about how you shot and postprocessed it. The info you gave was both interesting and useful. Many congratulations on your very well deserved win!
I was bothered by this when i first saw it. Of course, that's only because as soon as I saw it I knew for sure I wasn't going to win.
You've now won two of your last three...pretty impressive :)
Just a fabulous shot. A local phone company here uses wildlife in it's ads all the time, and this is an good as anything they've used. It was the first thing i thought of when i saw it - good enough to be published. Great job, Jean.
I was interested in "Bobsters" comment regarding the size of your image.
I was doing the exact same thing until someone pointed this out to me two challenges ago...what a difference it makes to the finished article,I was sizing to 640 pixels and saving.. I just didn`t realise that I could adjust the filesize before saving.
I'm sure you got a bunch of "it's not centered" comments on this one. I disagree if you did. Good center balance, and a whimsical subject. I like the expression on the frog's face! The background focuses the attention where it needs to be. 8
Excellent indeed! It's near perfect and is getting high marks from me. The hint of feet at the edge of th shell is a GREAT touch. Here's a way to turn a strong 9 into a 10: 1) There is a merger with the back ege of the shell and the frog's left eye. It would read a bit better if the eye stuck up a bit more. 2) Your filesize is just about 50 k - and there's quite a bit of mottling in the shell. Save it with less compression, closer to the 150 k limit and you'll have a stronger entry.
Oh, hello!
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
