Bee in flight...crit welcome (1 Viewer)

Just thought I'd throw this up to see what folks thought !? It took quite a few to get the bee within focus. F11 / 1/1000 @ 1600iso - Its a little noisey because of the high iso but I still think its a nice pic.

Cheers
Mat

matthompson said:

Just thought I'd throw this up to see what folks thought !? It took quite a few to get the bee within focus. F11 / 1/1000 @ 1600iso - Its a little noisey because of the high iso but I still think its a nice pic.

Cheers
Mat

Click to expand...

Hi Matt,

I also think it is a nice Pic,a darned good shot,and well done.
John

Matt, I really like this. I'm not good at critiqueing but will tell you why I like it:
colors - lovely on the flowers and the bee.
size - I like how the flowers allow one to "see" the smallness of the bee.
and you must have great patience to have caught this one.

It's a brilliant capture for certain, very well done. Doesn't mean it can't be improved though.
Have lightened up the exposure a bit and applied some sharpening, then finished it off with a little dose of neat image.

See what you think.
Adam

Hi guys

Many thanks for the nice comments folks.

Jaff - I like the post work on the pic. I'm surprised you pulled more detail out of the bee without things getting noisey. Do you work in PS...whats neat image, a plugin ? If so care to post the mod settings...or I can send/post the full res image !?

Mat

Didn't do anything fancy. I work in Elements 5.0 and from there I just lightened the shadows, darkened the highlights as well so the lighting over the pic is much more even and then a little bit of contrast as well. Sorry I can't remember the exact amounts used (try sort of 5% for each). Unsharp mask was done on about 100% at 0.7 pixels.

If you do a web search on Neat Image you should find your way to the free download, which can also be used as a plugin for photoshop (it's an independent program) so there'll be instructions on how to do that somewhere. One thing though, the free downloaded version only works on images of about 1000x1000 pixels or less (web images basically). For a more advanced version that works on full size images you have to pay for it. There are other programs that do the same job like Noise Ninja but I've gotten used to Neat Image and I'm happy with it.

Hope this helps.

Here's my effort. I've given it a quick adjust in Photofiltre (free), brightening it and selectively sharpening to avoid any noise. No noise reduction.

Very nice shot btw.

It's beautiful Mat. I'm not a photographer, but I am a beekeeper, and you managed to capture her approach well. What is the flower she is working?