Ladybird on old hydrangea

Hi!! It is nice to hear from you, thanks for your comment.

All my best.

c'est fantastique !

super work a great composition.

Rich.

The luminescence on the flower is quite lovely and makes a perfect backdrop for the ladybug.  This is a sweet and beautiful image!

Fantastic shot, wonderful composition and light. Hat off, Ellen!

Love u work.. so perfect! Congrats

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I like this picture. Folks from most western countries tend to enter and examine a photo much the same way we read words on a page, starting at the upper left and across. Here there is a strong leading line that begins as my eye enters the frame and directs me right to the sharply rendered subject. I like that. The delicacy of the dried up flower and soft background add to a pleasing effect.
The only suggestions for improvement, and these are nitpiks, would be to warm the image up a bit as it looks a bit blue on my calibrated LaCie 526 monitor. I might raise the frame fractionally to give a slight improvement to the overall balance, but as I said, these are small details. Kudos to you, Ellen, for a fine nature close-up.

Bravo, Ellen!

Fantastic shot: idea, composition, sharpness, DOF...

Thanks for sharing!

BR,

Ramon.

I like the way the ladybug appears to be reaching out towards the hydrangea buds on the left, while maintaining sort of a precarious hold on the leaf. There's a bit of a metaphor there for me, as humans often tend to overreach, and sometimes lose their grip on life. The blurring on the left suggests there might have been a bit of a breeze blowing, and I like the look. There's a slightly desaturated look to everything except the ladybug, and it works well for me. The image flows both ways for me, but I tend to look at it from right to left. There really isn't anything about this photograph that I don't like.

I've tried to photograph things like this, but can't seem to get the hang of it. This is a lovely little photograph by one of my favorite photographers on p.net.

http://www.insurancelowrate.com/products/images/5.LoL.jpgIt's very beautiful, both motion capture, color, perfecthttp://www.insurancelowrate.com/products/images/6.LoL.jpg

We all have our preferences as to subject matter and what moves us in an emotional or aesthetic sense. While I admit to little interest in the subject matter, I feel that Ellen does a very fine job of portraying her subject (lighting, coloration, color contrasts, depth of field use) and providing some compositional value in doing so. It is very worthwhile to visit her ladybug site in the portfolio. There are some images that would even be fine on their own, without a ladybug, possessing a sort of pseudo abstract rendering of the flowers, space, and both in focus and OOF details. Some of these, more so than the present image, would make fine semi-abstract images, where form and color contrasts would constitute the abstract values of the image. She may well not want to approach her work from that direction, as animals and insects as such seem to be her primary interests. And it cannot be very expensive to keep ladybugs as one's models.

I will admit right up front that this is a genre I have little to no interest in. That said, it is still a visual and the principles are the same.

My first hit with this image was really not too favorable not because of the subject and my interest, but because I really felt it was pretty static and overall very sterile feeling. I did look through Ellen's ladybug set and found many other images that seem to have much more life and overall strength whereas this one does not, IMO. It isn't that the image has to be "dynamic" but should have some sense of a visual dynamic, and I just don't find it here. It has the sense of just more of a record, set-up shot than anything else--maybe an exercise leading to something else. Someone mentioned the cool color cast, but I think it is more just the cold context here. As I said, I think it is very sterile feeling regardless of color--or lack thereof.

Possibly, to someone more in tune with the subject, there is something here of note that I am missing, but as an aesthetic piece, I am just not too moved by it. As I said, I found this one to be a bit of an anomaly as compared to many of Ellen's other pieces.

I love the aesthetics of subtle colour and focus range in this photo, but also it brought my attention to the whole album. Each picture is truly a story and I absolutely appreciate that Ellen has an affinity with these little critters, not just to get an aesthetic picture but also to communicate some insight into the world of the ladybird and how they traverse every obstacle to get to where they are going.

I'm with Jim on reading this photo from right to left, and also noting the stretching, reaching act of the ladybird, yet hanging on just in case. There is tension in this beautiful shot.

It made me smile and I think it achieves what photography does best; bringing the viewer into the subject or object's world ... watching how it interacts with it's environment. When you capture a moment in time that's otherwise lost forever, well that's recording a historic moment whether human or ladybird!

It feels like a ladybug/nature picture handled almost as a corporate ad. There's an officiousness to it that kind of betrays the subject and content. I do see dynamism in the ladybug herself, as she teeters and seems to be moving toward a leap. The bug has personality, but it's overshadowed by a strange take on the colorization and processing. Not that the processing isn't technically good. It seems fine. I just don't see it working to bring out what's pictured. It winds up feeling more like a study. There is very good handicraft here.

This is not my cup of tea either. But I have to admit that insects are perfectly legitimate subjects for photographs. The biggest problem I see with this photograph is that there is not enough ladybug and too much of everything else. That everything else is dully monochromatic, static and gloppy. The old wisdom from street photography applies here: If it's not good enough you're not close enough.

Maybe if the photographer got closer there would be a point to this image, aesthetic or scientific or both.

This is not my cup of tea either. But I have to admit that insects are perfectly legitimate subjects for photographs. The biggest problem I see with this photograph is that there is not enough ladybug and too much of everything else. That everything else is dully monochromatic, static and gloppy. The old wisdom from street photography applies here: If it's not good enough you're not close enough.

Maybe if the photographer got closer there would be a point to this image, aesthetic or scientific or both.

First of all, thank you Photo.net for having my photo as "Photo of the week"! That was a big surprise for me, also because i am not really active here so much.
Thank you all for your kind reactions, I appreciate it a lot! I now look with different eyes to this photo :)
Its taken some time ago, without tripod (I use that now always for my macro-photos) and I remember it was a bit difficult to come near to the ladybug because of the plants.

The right side feels a bit delicate with the ladybug seemingly reaching out. I like it. The left side seems very busy and haphazard. There seems almost two images in one

To Ken; Its one photo.....Thanks for the comment!

Yes, Ellen I know. The two elements could almost be seperate photos. Congrats on the POW. You are deserving of it

Terrific is such a dull word.  If I could write it repeatedly 1000 times it might say what I feel when viewing this image.

I enjoy many a macro shot, and have tackled them in the past.  This little image of nature's little gardener shows that you have patience and technique in spades. If you have a website, I invite you submit it to my page and spread the word to the thousands who drop by every day. Cheers.

This is a great post and show us the confliction between the old hydrangea and the alive ladybug.The atmosphere showed as well as possible and I can feel it very well.The BG is wonderful also and we have an uniformity between the background and the subjects.Best regards(Bobby).

The colours work perfectly. Beautiful photo!

I love this shot. Compared to my own macros, this one shows a bug with some character--and the shallow DOF gives a great effect on the left. Very nice work, Ellen!

--Lannie