I'm not sure how this will go over, but I liked this photo a lot because it's of such a.. different subject. I have a feeling the out of focus leaf is going to bug people, and it's hard to tell if it's dead center or not... I wasn't really sure what to go by, but moved too much either way it simply looked "off" somehow. Also, I expect some gripes about the thick border ;) People always hate my borders! lol
Editing: Cropping, resizing, USM, some very light Neat Image, and a bit of manual blurring on the background to remove some of the leftover noise. There was not a lot of noise to begin with, but I think it looks nicer completely smooth. Mild hue adjustment to cool the colours a tad. I also rotated this a bit to give it more of a balance for centering, though it's still difficult to tell if it's right because it's so asymmetrical. I might have tweaked the levels on this a bit; I can't remember for sure. If I did, it was minimal. The majority of the editing was sharpening.
I had a hard time choosing from all of my centered photographs, but I decided on this one for its uniqueness (at least to me it seems unique). I accidentally saved over my finished submission photo, and I see a little compression noise in it now... I hope it doesn't affect my score too much.
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Beautiful photo. I love the DOF, the clarity, the subject. Great color, tone, feel and composition (centered works perfectly for this photo). The only thing I would change would be the lighting under the leaf... I'd add a tiny little bit to lighten the eggs. I love the square crop!
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