The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This honey-bee had a lie-in this morning. only occasionally twitching. As it was about face-high in a small pine tree, I was able to make a stack.
Specific Feedback
I’m impatient to get a mirrorless camera with automatic focus bracketing (probably Olympus/OM), but at least here I wasn’t finding it quite so difficult to stack manually. An antenna twitched, so I had to retouch there. Please tell me if you spot any glaring stacking faults.
Technical Details
D500 +105mm macro 1/200 f14 ISO 400
6-photo stack in Zerene (PMAX). In PS: cropping, tonalities and some removal of bright reflections with the Spot Healing Brush - final sharpening.
what a cool thing to see. I love napping bees. They’re so fun. Overall I like it, but wonder if it could use some more contrast by pulling the blacks down. I find that PMax stacks can wash out color and add noise unless you do slabbing and then knock the noise down in the slabs before stacking those. But with only 6 images there isn’t a reason to use the slabbing function. I see a tiny bit of possible stack goopiness just under the pollen basket (I think that’s what the collection thing is on the back legs). Cool find and that you had time to stack!
I see the little area that Kris mentioned as well, Mike, pretty minor though. Beautiful detail everywhere else in the image and a lovely stack. Very well done.
Nice Mike. I agree with @Kris_Smith about the blacks and also see the little spot she mentioned (I can’t help you with that because I haven’t started stacking yet). I love the BG with the slanted lines running through the image. Nice.
Veeery cool! Wonderful stack and a gorgeous BG! I think @Kris_Smith has a good idea about the blacks, and I wonder if it is just a tiny bit over-sharpened, but small items for a great capture!
Mike, I’m thoroughly enjoying the view here, the bee stands out very well against a background that has a good sense of abstraction with all of the angled shapes and colors. I think the redo has too much “pop” as it’s starting to show halos around the top of the head and abdomen.
Mike, I like that the bee is somewhat darker in the redo. It looks like you were working in harsh light, and sometimes that is just hard to fix in post processing.
