sgust

Gregory and Verena, I'm glad you like it. Here's the unedited version just cropped to show the same perspective.

I did a little composite image editing here. While I was taking some

long exposures of the waterfall some boys came by and went to the

other side of the creek to do some fishing. I snapped a picture as

they were crossing and merged the fast shutter speed image of one of

the boys with the long exposure images to get him frozen in mid-jump

over the smooth running water. Let me know what you think.

The shallow depth of field and the train tracks work really well together.

Hmm, well consider me a bit surprised. Like I said, I think it's a well captured scene. It's just that the blurring lures my attention away, instead of focusing it on the subject. But that's just my perception, and it's helpful to know where my personal tastes differ from other peoples. Thanks for replying.

Nice abstraction of the caterpillar. It's obvious that it's organic. But without knowing what it is, it would leave me wondering what I'm looking at. If I could change one thing though, I would go for a bit more depth of field, but still a really interesting image as is.

Very nicely captured! All the elements come together perfectly.

Nice use of the early light. Something worth trying next time might be to position yourself so that the horses head was blocking the direct sunlight. I imagine it could create a very nice effect.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I agree, it's very obvious that the flash was the main light source for this image. But given that it was taken with a 500mm lens a dusk, there wasn't much getting around that. If I get around to it, I'll see if I can spend some time trying to make it look as if it were taken with more natural lighting. I'm soon going to get another flash so I can use both mounted to a bracket, one on each side of the camera. That should help create a bit more diffused lighting for situations like this.

Thanks for taking a look. It was a bit of luck that this particular snake wasn't in too much of a hurry and it presented me with a few good opportunities to frame the image without rushing. Though I did need to make sure I kept my distance, as these are notorious for being quick to send people to the hospital.

Very nice, I like how you went wide with this image. It puts the display into perspective.

Well seen, you might want to rotate this a bit to get the vertical lines vertical though.

What a great image. The back lighting of the wings and the interesting out of focus background worked out very nicely.

Nice close-up. You might want to ease up on the sharpening a bit though. The flower petals especially seem a bit oversharpened. I know I have more than a couple images with the same issue. Just my 2¢.

Wow! That's a surreal view. It's great as is, and being far better than any night sky images I've ever produced I'm hesitant to even suggest it, but I'm wondering if it might benefit from adjusting the levels down a bit so that there are some more deep shadows. It just seems a bit too well lit for an image of a starry night.

Nice candid shot, but the post capture blurring is over done. It's so strong that it distracts from the image.

I was thinking the same thing as David, the small clouds make this image far better than if they weren't present. Nicely captured landscape.

Nice image, the only thing that I would change is the framing. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but the composition seems kind of awkward. The door almost seems a bit cramped, like it needs a bit more space. Just my 2¢.

Great image Vlad! Everything came together in this one, the mood and the facial expression are really well captured here.

Thanks for commenting. Yeah, I got lucky. Although these aren't that rare here, as I've often found abandoned nests.

Great image!

Thanks all for the comments. And yes Laura, it's kind of funny that finding a insect that I'd only known from pictures could put a big smile on my face. Doesn't hurt that it turned out to be very photogenic.

To see more images of this mantis go to this link.

Thanks for the feedback.

Here's what it started out like.

I liked this image for the subject, but the background was very

distracting. So I liberally blurred and darkened the area surrounding

the nest. Have a look and let me know what you think. I think it's

maybe a bit overdone, but I had some pretty good feedback on an image

of a passion flower that I applied the same technique to for the same

reason. I'm curious as to what popular opinion is on this amount of

post processing.