Maximum Presentation Value

I want to setup a website to showcase my best work (if you read my other post "do I have what it takes", then you know that I have a very hard time appreciating my own work. I am currently not pursuing photography as a profession, although it is a dream that I would secretly love to come true). I think that setting up a website is the first step in putting my work out there for examination by the general public. I have loved photography since I was 10 years old, but I never really developed a specific interest. I want to setup a studio and have been looking at equipment online. Since I don't have a specific area of expertise...in other words I'm a general photographer, I am trying to decide how to go through my past work and decide what types of images should be included in a website. I am also trying very hard to learn more about working with PS CS, so that I can maximize the presentation of the images I am choosing.

I am attaching an original "straight out of the camera" image of a honey bee and the final image that I have adjusted levels, cropped, and added matting. Am I getting the most out of this image....is there anyway to improve upon what I have already done? Are there plugins designed for matting and framing? I just adjusted the canvas size.

Thanks for taking a look.

Mike

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The photo itself is a nice shot. However, the clover seems to be a bit too hot or too bright making the DOF hard to make out. I tried different levels in CS2 but couldnt come up with anything right away to make it sharper.

None of it looks all that sharp, but the highlights in the blossoms are so blown out that there is not enough detail there, anyway.

Due to the extremely low resolution of pictures that have been downsampled to only 800x600 pixels, sharpness or lack thereof is impossible to judge when it's a close call.

However, the long vertical leaf coming up in the lower left suggests that you may have been focused at about that distance instead of on the bee and blossoms, because it appears to be noticeably sharper. That and the blown out highlights are the basic problems.

Remember that adjustment are different for printing and web viewing. Use the PS VIEW-PROOF SETUP-MOINTOR RGB for web adjusting and CYMK for printing. Save for web and view the optimized picture too.