Found this Monarch caterpillar snacking on my Butterfly weed (think that’s what it is called) this morning. My struggle was to get good focus while since she kept moving and twisting, all the while eating my plant.
In ACR I used linear profile set to auto, cloned out a couple of wayward stems, denoised/softened the background. In PS I used highlight/shadow adjustment layer and a high pass filter on the caterpillar.
Did I sharpen it too much? Or overprocessed? Other thoughts and comments welcome.
Nikon D7200, f/3.2, 1/2500sec., iso 500 @ 105mm, tripod, polarizer.
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A beautiful image and I think the processing is just right. Lighting is fabulous and the background is excellent. Very well done.
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Thanks so much, @terryb. I’m experimenting with the widest aperture, auto ISO, fast shutter speeds along with processing techniques to see what gets me the best results. . …jury is still out.
Thanks again for the feed back.
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Linda, there are some great colors here and the mix of caterpillar and plant looks good. The softness on the cat.'s head is a problem. I don’t know what would have happened to the background with a smaller aperture, but I think (totally subjective…) that having both the cat the the flowers sharp would look very good with this nice lighting. This is also a view where getting the rest of that top flower in the frame “might” be good, although cutting things off as you have done has merit.
Thanks, @Mark_Seaver. Yes, I agree with getting the entire caterpillar in focus would have been the best choice. And through much trial and error found somewhere around 7.1 produce fairly good results. The challenge for me was, not only to get a good background/composition but also get an even focal plane of the caterpillar who was more interested in demolishing the plant than getting photographed. There is still one on the plant, so haven’t given up yet. Thanks again.