I was very glad when I saw this dragonfly during a hike in the Netherlands with my family, it is the very first one I photographed - ever. I thought I was lucky to see one, but it appeared that there was a ton of them ...
The pictures in this post are all crops of the same photograph. I would like to hear which one you like best, if any.
All feedback welcome !
Dragonfly on a branch
It's a very good shot in my opinion. Well done. I'm not that lucky currently to capture insects... ;)
Thanks ! I must say though that I crafted my luck a bit. I knew that there were dragonflies nearby, because I had seen them on our camping. It were all pretty fast fly-by's, so I never had the chance to shoot one. Hence I planned our hike so that we got near water ...
They do have a funny face, don't you think ?
The whole animal is amazing. One of my favorites. They are like choppers, can fly in place. They also very fast. Fortunately they very territorial, so they almost always coming back if you scare them. ;)
Not only the face is great, have you watched their wings? I hope I'll find a dead one in good condition, one day. So I can make really detailed pictures. ;)
Actually, it sat there so still, if I had my tripod and macro-rail at hand, I could have easily focus-stacked it with like 30 pictures or so ...
Great shot! I think I like the widest one best. And if yo shot wider than that I would like to see the end of the tail still in the frame. Not a huge deal though it falls out of focus enough that it barely maters, just when the subject ends so close to the edge, I'd like it to all be in the frame. For the close up I would shift the subject slightly to the left as to not cut off the front feet. Also I think you could get a little more detail out of the face with a little dodging and burning, maybe bring exposure and contrast up just a hair, but don't get too carried away. These are all very minor things, and they're solid images as they are, well done!
Seems I just cut off the tip of the tail in the original, I just have some more wing to show. I followed your advice with some saturation and contrast, just hope I didn't overdo it. See for yourself...
On the wide one I think I liked your first crop better. On the closeup the second looks better. I think I like the colors better this time too, but think the exposure could still come up a little, especially on the front, lighter colored part of the face, maybe even just a localized mask.
Something more like this ?
Btw. I really appreciate your help on post-processing, as I consider myself pretty much newbie in this area !
Looking great! I'm certainly no pro when it comes to post either. I just like to play around with the sliders until I like what I'm seeing, and try to err on the side of too little. .
The saturation is really good in this version. If you can lift the shadows slightly (not much), I think it's still a little on the dark side. At least the background. On of the disadvantages of using flash and a small aperture... ;)
Actually I didn't use flash and I shot wide open, though my combination restricted me to f5.6. The background was just dark.
Do you like this one better ?
Oh I thought you used a flash, because of the catch light. ;)
Yes this one is better. The face isn't in the dark anymore.
that catch light happens to be my favorite studio light (the sun) ;-)