Untitled

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Crazy awesome photograph, truly new and exciting to see, and no elaborate post-processing, fantastic

This photograph is very clear and brilliant...The drops of water on the insect`s body make your pic very strong and impressive...I like the posture and light here...Very well done and thnx for sharing...Regards(Bobby).

thank you all so much for your comments and especially for those responsible of the "photo of the week".

I've never seen anything like this before. Just incredible.

Ian.

Absolutely spectacular result you have achieved here with a very challenging task. An inspiring example of what can happen when skill and opportunity collide. The compound views of the compound eye are so cool!
 
The focus is perfectly placed with the dof covering the important combination of the eye and  dewdrops , before begining to falling off at the rear leg and thorax. The soft,  shadowless early morning light and the effect that light has on both the colours and the surface tension of the dew is what puts this one head a shoulders above any similar dew macros I have seen. I love that the colours are not over-saturated but rather possess a  subdued glow .
 
The composition itself is my least favourite aspect. The aspect ratio would work better in my opinion as a 1-1 ratio. The  third leg and bottom of the thorax being superfluous and weighing down the bottom of the frame without adding anything.  I took the liberty of cropping as well as rotating the image which IMO give a more balanced and pleasing composition. I find that rotating the image after cropping suggests a strong diagonal that works better than the original crop. 
 
Very well done Martin, this image is a well deserved reward for those, early morning out of bed at the crack of dawn , forays you have undertaken while perfecting your craft.

Surprising and amazing ,the little drops marks the diference...between the best macros that I have seen in PN.Congratulations

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It's so bejeweled as to nearly obscure it's actual nature. If not for the spiny legs, who could tell what it was? Pretty amazing shot, for sure. I think Gordon's onto something with the cropping. Why is it that just about any photo can be cropped?

wonderful shot, very good detail congratulations

Awesome crazy and alien! Wow. Such color.

I am amused tho by the lack of titles in these insane photos.

Hello,
first congrats to my brother Martin :)! Gordon's crop maybe an aesthetical alternative but Martin's claim to this photograph is beeing a "nature document" no manipulation/orchestration. The dragonfly will never "sleep" in an absolute horizontal position.

Cheers
Stevie

An interesting observation Doug has made regarding cropping, which I however do not find to be true, at least speaking for myself. I very seldom suggest a crop.  I instinctively assume that the crop decision is an integral part of the photographs decision process and as such I try to see the image from the photographers perspective. I try to understand the crop and make it work before offering any suggestion about cropping. 

Looking through Martin's folders I did not find a single insect macro that had been visibly cropped, the aspect ratio  appears to be straight out of the camera. While I respect his decision to offer up his images as documents and I will say that his in-camera cropping  and resulting composition is quite good ,  many of his macros are just screaming to be cropped in order to make for better composed photographs. What they may gain as documents they loose as photographs.

That having been being said I do like the fact that Martin is a purest and it reflects positively in his macro work. Given the amount of complaining I do about the proclivity of so many photographers to try to  software manipulate bad photography into passable " art " I  do feel a need to state how refreshingly honest Martins images are. Getting a good image at the time is paramount. Whether or not a purists approach allows cropping or rotation afterward is secondary.

When I viewed this absolutely striking image a few days ago, I looked for a crop too, and found it. The same one that Gorden found. However, I didn't see turning the image 90 degrees as he did. Excellent idea. I do feel that the original artist did crop. Whether in the camera or in production, I don't know. I feel too, that it was too tightly cropped at that point, cutting off the feet, and if done in the camera, it did not allow diagonal views as well as the horizontal, as Gordon suggests, or the original vertical. It might have been even more attractive in some other pose.

That issue aside, it is a technical wonder and one of the most eye catching inages I have seen in a long time.

Willie the Cropper

I think it's about time you treated yourself to a nice new 105m Nikkor. Be really great to see what you can do with it.
Truly amazing shot. look like it's frozen in time.

"just about any photo can be cropped"... that doesn't mean that every photo should be cropped.

I prefer the original composition. It nicely fits into a frame laid out according to the Golden Mean.

The square frame is also nicely balanced, but it contradicts the nature of the subject (and the subtle effects of gravity on the water droplets). The suggested new composition is non-sensible (disconcerting) and requires the subject to be considered primarily as an abstract form, which works against the startling authenticity of the image... t

This picture is stunning, but for me what makes it really special are te drops in the eyes, with the diferents enlargements and angles of the compound structure of the eye. The rest of the picture, even being impresive is "normal", I mean that is more or less easy to find other pictures similar, if you use to look insects macros. But these eyes are the most beautiful I remember. Congratulations.

I'm really sorry guys, but I just cannot get as excited as everyone else. Yes, of course technically it is very impressive. However, in terms of composition it is only good. To put it a very British way, it reminds me of an eccentric old aunt with a tea cosy on her head! Don't get me wrong, it is better than anything I have taken, but I think it lacks overall form. 5/5

Its a stunningly UNIQUE image. There's been a lot of great macro work posted on PN but this has got to take the prize for uniqueness. The only criticism I can add is that perhaps (and I do emphasize "perhaps") it would benefit from a bit more saturation.

Let's see if I can show you what I mean.