dem_photos

Critiques more than welcome.

Your critique is welcome, as always.

Beautiful lighting and detail!

Beautiful shot; wonderful composition. The twigs at the left unfortunately don't do much for me, though--they don't seem substantial enough to warrant sharing the frame with that wonderful bird. I hesitate to suggest a digital alteration, since I see you've marked the image as unaltered, but I think the photo might be improved by removing them in PhotoShop. You could also try cropping them out. In fact, I think the photo would still work quite well cropped to just the right half, with perhaps a little off the top as well (though the resulting composition would of course be a lot less interesting).

Great focus and color (your Midwest squirrels are definitely more colorful than our East Coast squirrels). Normally, I'm all in favor of off-center compositions and big blank spaces, but in this case I might prefer the photo with a good chunk cropped off the left. As it is now, the focus of the photo (the squirrel's face, and particularly the eye) is too close to the center for my tastes. Or if you don't like that argument for cropping, how about this: With the squirrel spilling out over three sides of the photo, it doesn't seem quite right to have so much extra space on the fourth. Still, it's a great shot--that's one ferocious looking squirrel (good thing you had a long lens).

Any and all criticism welcome.

Nicely composed, and a good, even, blurred background. It's unusual (in my U.S. eperience) to find an Argiope spider with four radiating web designs like this. The lighting strikes me as very harsh, though; I'm guessing you used on-camera flash. I think the best way to improve a photo like this would be to get the flash off the camera somehow (assuming there's not enough ambient light to manage without flash), perhaps even bounce it off or shoot through a small umbrella (not necessarily an impractical suggestion in this case--this spider isn't going anyplace).

I think you have mastered the art of hunting insects with the Canon MP-E 65mm f2.8 1x-5x. If I ever need a photo to illustrate what a haltere is, I'll know where to turn.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that sunlight passing through the

youngest leaves on the smokebush in my yard turns them an amazing

color. I have been struggling to take a pleasing photograph of this

phenomenon. Capturing the color isn't a problem, but somehow I haven't

been satisfied with the outcomes, until this one (and I still have my

doubts). Any thoughts?

Amar, yaar--Two of my favorite photos! How could I dislike this? They fit together beautifully and together make something fundamentally different from either individually. The line of sight from the dancer to the drummer is almost tangible. One nitpicky thing: In this version of your drummer, the hand doesn't look so much blurred as distorted to me--much larger than it should be.

 

I'm glad to hear you are thinking of working more with this photo. A while ago, I added a comment to the RJ photo that it might be worth revisiting with your 20D. I still think there's an Indian dance calendar in your future (if you haven't published one already).

Beautiful shot with great detail. I think it could benefit from being cropped on the right a little.

Kenneth: I'm not sure what you mean. These are milkweed aphids, as the caption says. Aphids are tiny insects that suck sap out of plant stems; in this case, the plant stem is bent into an arch. The distance from the left side of the stem to the right in this photo is probably somewhat less than an inch.

Monarch butterflies have made milkweed famous (in some circles anyway)

by storing the toxins from milkweed sap in their bodies, thereby

becoming toxic themselves. Potential predators quickly learn to avoid

butterflies with the monarch's bright colors. My guess is that there's

a similar story behind the color of these aphids (Aphis nerii), but I

don't know that for a fact. Anyone ever try eating one?

Very nice composition. A little more depth of field would be nice, but I think you did the best possible with the limited depth of field you had.

Thank you Amar and TamTam for your comments, and everyone for your ratings. So far the consensus seems to be that this photo is exactly as original as it is aesthetically pleasing--ratings range from 4/4 to 7/7, but all 15, as I write this, are the same for aesthetics and originality.

 

It is much more gratifying when a photo gets higher ratings than I expect than when one gets lower ratings, but somehow it is no less mystifying or informative. I frankly don't find this photo to be particularly pleasing aesthetically; I'm more fond of insects than most, but that robber fly still looks downright ugly to me. I wish it had at least chosen to eat a fly with bright red eyes or something (the sort of thing Krister Hall seems to find so easily). I can only assume that many of the higher ratings this photo received are for the natural moment captured, and for that I should belatedly thank my wife. I was searching a grape vine for interesting tendrils (and taking some very dull photos) when my wife spotted this scene and called me over. This proved to be a much easier subject than the tendrils--I still don't have any good tendril photos. But the tendrils will still be there next weekend.

This robber fly was evidently so absorbed in absorbing its prey that

it was unconcerned about a camera lens just inches from its face.

Robber flies will probably never have the charismatic appeal of

ladybugs or praying mantises, but I bet they do more to keep apple

maggot flies off of my apple trees than either (which is not to imply

that this one is ingesting an apple maggot fly; chances are that the

prey here is neither harmful nor beneficial to humans).

 

The composition of this photo is more center-weighted than usual for

me. Thoughts on that or anything else about my photos are always welcome.

Comments always welcome.

My gut reaction was the same as Kat's. I like off-center as much as the next guy (more, maybe), but in this case, I think I'd like to see at least a little of the wall to the left of the light.

A very creative and striking image. I agree with Marilana, and would go further to say that I'd rather all the marbles were as sharp and bright as the sharpest marbles. The converging lines give the photo all the sense of depth it needs.

I like the warm colors in this photo. What kind of light did you use? Or did you adjust the colors afterwards? I think I would like the composition a little better if the hand were not quite so central (left/right) and the logs did not all fit inside the frame. But I'm not one of those who believe that there are absolutes in composition, and I think this works very well as it stands.

One bit of unsolicited advice: It would be better to upload slightly smaller versions of your photos so that Photo.net doesn't have to resize them. The resizing has caused some "noise" in this photo that isn't there in the larger version, but a lot of people who rate photos probably don't bother to check the larger versions.

Great colors, and nice job positioning that bird. Two things bother me about this image: I'd like a steeper slope in silhouette at the left, and I'd prefer the clouds in the lower right to be closer to horizontal. I'll attach a rotated version that required a little "cloning" to fill in the upper right and lower left corners.

I agree with Annie. Wonderful colors and composition. Here's a practical hint for posting on Photo.net: If you had made this just a little bit smaller, PN would not have resized the image. The resizing seems to have caused some noise in the umbrella that isn't there in the original.

Good job spotting this critter. The photo could be sharper, and though it's hard to tell for sure from this version, it looks as if the blurriness may be due to camera shake. If your camera allows you to set shutter speed and/or aperture, you might do well in this sort of situation to try for a faster shutter speed (there appears to have been plenty of light).

Thank you very much Amar and Nabarun for your kind words.