Canon 100mm Macro lens @ 1:1. Sunpak 544 flash w. Lumiquest pocket bouncer (gold reflector) @ 1/4 power (manual mode).
Editing:
Cropped, curves adjustment, selective hue adjustment on background only, sharpening (some selective), a bit of gentle dodge & burn, NeatImage background, and there you have it.
Statistics
Place: 2 out of 248 Avg (all users): 7.1023 Avg (commenters): 8.3158 Avg (participants): 7.0603 Avg (non-participants): 7.1833 Views since voting: 9239 Views during voting: 306 Votes: 176 Comments: 39 Favorites: 17 (view)
Thanks to all, this was the one and only shot from about 1.5 hours of shooting out in the back yard that was even remotely challenge-worthy. Still, I really need to work on my lighting, and maybe catch some dragonflies if I'm ever going to best Jacko, LOL!
I also wanted to add some additional details that I forgot to include during submission...
This guy was busy having dinner on some weeds in a bck corner of our land. I still had good illumination from late afternoon sun, but with 1:1 magnification, I still needed quite a bit of fill flash. The 1/60 shutter speed preserved some of the ambient light, at the cost of a very slight blur on the thorax, which is only slightly visible in this reduced-size version. He would not make a very good large print however.
With the combination of title and image, I was going the "anthromorphic route", that is assigning human emotions/reactions to the subject. I imagined his thoughts on the fact that I disturbed the priviacy of his dinner with my photographic intrusion... can you look in his eyes and imagine his thoughts? Yikes!
very nice close up. the dof is also impressive. the lighting might be a tad harsh, but i realize that there needs to be a lot of light to get the great amount of detail you've obtained. one of the better shots for sure.
Damn! This may be the best bug yet ... and that saying a lot. Absolutely fantastic image. I love everything about it but most of all the detail in the eye. WOW!!!
Interrupted at Dinner
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