I initially found this guy lying on its side under some of the petals. Completely drenched and stationary, I thought it was dead. I gave it a little nudge and it stated moving, whereby it eventually wound up in the position seen here. After I had my focus bracketed shots, I continued to watch it while it attempted to groom away some of the water on its back. I was happy when it decided to fly off.
Feedback Requests
Wondering if the saturation in the flower detracts from the Bee.
Pertinent Technical Details
OM-1 MKII, 90mm macro, 1/250 at f9, natural light, hand held, 23 images stacked in Helicon Focus.
Stunning detail in this image, Steve. I really like the composition as well and the sopping wet bumblebee makes a great subject. To my eye, you could back off on the sharpening a bit.
Steve, what a find and what a capture. Love that he is all wet. You really got into his face. I agree with @Dennis_Plank about the sharpening. The bee really does stand out well on that flower. Glad the bee was okay and able to fly away.
Your level of sharpening is OK for the image. There are some very contrasty highlights and the yellow areas in some spots are very bright and this contributes to the over-sharpened look. Reduce the highlights using the highlight feature with the linear profile for gentle adjustments. Those featureless bright areas tend to grab my eye. The reds are fine and comp looks pretty good…Jim
I agree with Jim that it doesn’t seem over-sharpened, and his advice about reducing the highlights should help make the image even better. The flower doesn’t detract to my eye especially as it is not complete - the bloom on the right balances the composition. Talk about a bad hair day!
Steve: @Mike_Friel took the words right out of my mouth. Fantastic capture with eye watering detail. I’m OK with the sharpening and agree with @Jim_Zablotny regarding the highlights. Not sure about your workflow, but I do almost everything in LR except sharpening. I import the image into PS to resize it for web presentation and then sharpen with the ACR filter. Works great for any size output and seems to give more visibility to changes. >=))>
Steve, this is a great find, very well photographed. It does seem a bit “glary”, which at first I too thought was oversharpening. Further viewing has me thinking that it’s more of what @Mike_Friel says, the whites in the fur are too bright. Backing that up is that I don’t see any detail in the white fur on it’s right (viewer’s left) side. The composition looks great, with the upturned petal and water drop adding well to the story. How fun to watch it groom and fly off.
I looked at my original PSD file and found the problem with the over sharpening. I used a sharpening action from Piximperfect (Unmesh Dinda) and forgot to add blend-if to reduce it in the highlights. I’ve toned those highlights in the legs down, and also used frequency separation to add some texture to the bee’s bright fur. Thanks again for all your helpful suggestions.
Don’t mind the colors at all. I think they complement the subject well.
And honestly, I’m fine with the sharpening… but I wonder if part of what makes it feel oversharpened to some is that the focus stack seems to apply to the bee, but not the flower. Specifically the parts of the flower under the insect. It makes the subject pop somewhat unnaturally to me. Now, perhaps the way the flower parts are arranged, they truly are beyond the end of the bee’s wings in the DoF plane, but it seems like the bee has been selectively sharpened, which gives this illusion that it’s detached from its perch.
