The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical
About This Image
Here is a hummingbird moth caterpillar that I found on my new-to-the year coral honeysuckle plant. He was moved to the mature scarlet honeysuckle right after this photo and is still happy munching away. The background is the brick of our house.
Feedback Requested
This is a single shot with a single diffused speedlight. I think did okay on lining up parallel to the caterpillar.
Any thoughts appreciated.
Excellent job on lining up parallel with the caterpillar and getting it all in gorgeous focus, Allen. For my taste, I would have preferred either no flash or moving it off camera to get some more sidelight on the caterpillar as this has a rather flat look probably augmented by the pure colors of the subject and background.Too bad you didn’t have your hummingbird setup available as it would have made this pretty spectacular.
I do like the pure geometric character of the composition which works very well.
Allen, the cat. is nicely sharp and the details in it show up well. I do like how it’s arched to get to the leaf. The details in the bricks are well disguised, so this could easily be a natural background.
Dennis, Mark, thank you for the comments. I was hoping the brown underside of the caterpillar and the very slight color change/shadowing on the other side would give a bit of a 3D look to the caterpillar but that maybe wishful thinking. I plan on getting an AK diffuser to upgrade from my current Angler 100 pretty soon. That will still use a speedlight in the hot shoe but I’m interested to see what difference it makes.
What a perfect pose he gave you, Allen. Everything that needs to be sharp is, and I would have never known that was brick behind him if you had not told us.
I love the pose. Whenever I find one of these big beauties, they’re always somewhere ugly doing something gross. You totally lucked out. I think the contrast could be reduced to lower the flashed look if you had a mind. The details are really excellent and that pose is priceless. The brick wall makes for a good bg that contrasts nicely with that vibrant green. Maybe the adult will give you an equally nice pose in future.
