Found this guy at a park. Huuuuge. It was standing on the edge of a bunch of outside amphitheater seats (that's what the blue is.) I just darkened it a little bit.
Hey, welcome to FM and a beautiful first post to boot!
Nice find.
The crop is a bit tall and the eye gets a bit of a pull up and to the left as is.
Consider cropping from the top, maybe just below the shift from blue on the right.
If you have noise reduction software, could benefit from a bit of cleanup. And some selective sharpening of the mantis head.
I find the colors and the diagonal band of light beautiful and make the shot compelling.
As for C&C, a thing to consider when putting leading lines in a photo is that they have the potential lead two ways: pulling the viewer towards the focal point or leading them away from it. What often determines which occurs is how strongly the focal point itself contrasts in tone / color / sharpness / shape with everything else in the frame. The head has good tonal contrast and there is a nice contrast in shape between the straight lines and angles of the legs, but he's getting lost in the shadows...
I did a quick edit by duping the original twice. On one of the new layers I moved the middle slider in Levels right to darken the head a bit, and on the other I moved the middle slider left to open up the midtones and the left output slider right to lighten the shadows. Then using masks I selectively opened the darker layer on the head and the lighter one around him as if lit by spotlight on a stage - which is a good analogy to keep in mind when wanting to make something the star of the show on a dark background.
