The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I was looking for macro subjects in the garden keeping in mind the weekly challenge topic. Being the dry season, it was not easy to find something interesting, in fact, I was just using a 300mm lens and not a macro lens assuming it was not the best season. But then this beautiful Jewel bug flew in right over my head out of nowhere and settled on a leaf. It started slowly crawling up the leaf, giving me enough time to position myself against the light and capture some shadow and backlight.
Specific Feedback
Although the image was not shot on a macro lens, I found it captured enough details to make it look interesting. Cropping/framing is always a bit of challenge for me, so posting 2 crops to get feedback on them.
Anuradha, the backlighting looks great here. It shows off the beetle and the leaf’s veins very well. I’m not sure about how close your 300mm will let you focus, but many of today’s “long” lenses will focus to 1/3 or 1/4 of lifesize, with works very well for close up work, like this. In your second post the legs and their shadows are too close to the frame for “comfort”. You could also try cropping to 4x5 from the right to reduce the out of focus area along the right edge.
Anuradha: If you’re handholding that 300mm you are steadier than me by a lot. I struggle some with my 70-200! You might consider having an extension tube handy for those occasions where you want to get closer with your long lens. I often use a 2x and a tube on my 70-200 to get close.
I think you hit the jackpot with the 4x5 recommended by @Mark_Seaver. In portrait orientation it accentuates the climbing better than in the landscape versions.
I see you’re relatively new to NPN so welcome and looking forward to more of your work. >=))>
Anuradha, if you try @Bill_Fach,s suggestion of extension tube(s) plus teleextender, it’s important to add the extension tube(s) first and then the extender. This is because the extension tube increases the magnification by the ratio of the extension tube length divided by the focal length. If you add the extension to the main lens with the teleextender than your focal length is the prime + tele, so you get a lot less magnification.
Thank you so much. I’ve never used extension tubes. I do use a 1.4x tele for bird shots. I’ll get some and try them for sure. I have a 100mm 2x macro manual focus lens, which I’ve not yet spent enough time exploring. That’s for the monsoon season!
