I was walking around my plot in the late afternoon and was taking shots of the thorns on this Cactus; the Opuntia (Prickly Pear) when I spotted movement; it was covered in little striped worms (I'm unsure of what species, but they are introduced as they eat the Opuntia (not indigenous to Africa) and destroy it). As I scanned around the cactus I saw a shiny glint and focused. To my amazement there was a bee (long dead) impaled on some of the thorns!
How it got there I have no idea. I promise it wasn't a contrived shot!
Perfect for the Life and Death DPC!
As this is my first entry, I spent a lot of time reading the rules, and only applied crop and USM to this entry.
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Very good exposure, and the toothpic/spear image the thorns give actually hurts the eye with its sharpness with the possible death in future message! Very well done Harvs!
Here is a little more of what i was talking about, working with a smaller JPG hurts, but you can get teh general ideas as to what i mean with selective colours and hue and saturation.
I should also add, it is very grainy from doing a close crop and over processed some what, but it is a general idea
Wow, I'm stoked, the "bug" has bitten. Thx all who voted (except the evil masked "1" voter), and those who commented, Katherine, Jason (yes you are correct, I have two types of Shrike on my plot (Fiscal and Crimson Breasted Shrike)) but I've only seen them impale Lizards so it never dawned on me, and how the Shrike avoids those spikes is anyone's guess!, Juliet for advice on colours, will try harder next time in PS but I am still "old school" and find Post Processing cheating!, Dan thx for encouragement I was rather lucky!
Well, these little worms look like they are Cinnabar moth Caterpillars!
Well, for your first ever challenge you did amazingly well! You read the rules and used crop and unsharp, there is also a lot more that you can do in in Basic.
You captured a great shot that was just right for this challenge. In post processing, a couple of thing you could play with is, contrast, saturations, selective colours.
Prickly pear have very flat oval shaped pads and can range from dark green to a yellow green colour. A little selective colour may have brought out some more green to really offset the insects on here.
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