A Lady, a Bee and a Flaher

I shot these Sunday while walking throught my neighborhood. I would appreciate some input. This was the second opportunity I've had to try out my 100mm Macro.

1.

That second shot is really nice. great job

Constructive criticism alert....

1) Nice focus and you have the ladybug on the thirds. However, it's not great compositionally (ladybugs are normally on leaves, chomping on aphids would be a bonus)

2) Terrific focus on the bee. You have the head and eyes exactly right. The only problem I see is the foreground being intrusive. A savage crop on this one would sort this out nicely.

3) Nice work on focusing on the stamens inside the bowl. However, it might have been nice to have the edge of the flower sharp also (changing your viewpoint may have made this easier).

Macro is hard. I know.

Nice job, Jamie on all of them. Wish I could get that kind of focus, manually.

I'm no expert by any means, however, if they were my shots this is what I'd do in PP:

1. Lady bug is just a tad dark on my monitor, I would boost the exposure in PP at least a 1/4 - 1/2 stop.

2. Great sharpness on Mr. Bumble. The front flower (bokeh) takes up too much percentage of the shot for my taste. At the least I would try to crop out the red in the lower LH corner, could be tough to get it all and not lose any of the wing tips. The fall off of bokeh in the background is very pleasing, IMHO.

3. Think the only thing I'd do here is to try to bring the center of the flower into the cross hairs of the right and bottom third. KWIM? Just to see what it would do for the composition.

1. To my eye it looks as if the Ladybug is not sharp. The point of focus seems to be on the rock in the middle of the picture. I agree with Becky on the darkness of the Ladybug also. She (He?) should be brighter and the red should "pop" more.

2. My first impression was moving around to the right to eliminate the OOF portion of the flower intruding at the left. Of course, now that the picture has already been taken, the crop idea already suggested might be the best way to improve the image. I'd suggest perhaps going to a square crop on this one.

3. Not being familiar with the variety of flower, I may be way off base here, but I think I would have tried to find one that was a bit more open. You can barely see the inside of the blossom. I also agree about trying to get the edges of the flower sharp as well.

That being said, I think you did very well for only a second outing. Macro is not the easiest thing to do, which is one of the reasons I tend to stay away from it.

Thanks for the input!

Good composition in all of them- esp like the bee shot.
Think the ladybird shot would be better from a lower angle.
Brian V.

Very nice bee shot.

Thanks

i really like the second shot. the eyes are awesome!

I agree the bee shot is awesome! Very sharp and clear and nice composition.