Not only are these critters out already, but I actually saw a mating pair. Shot between 2 and 3 times life size.
I "cheated" on these portraits. I find it easier to shoot them while holding the camera horizontally -I just frame it in the view finder knowing that I'll flip it on the computer later.
LordV wrote:
Wonderful series John- not exactly a camouflage job is it
can't help thinking you just missed with the composition in #1 though.
Brian V.
Thanks Brian! I wish I hadn't cut off his leading foot, but if I remember correctly there was something in the frame that would have blown the shot if I had positioned the critter differently. I increased the mag, and changed the orientation of the critter in the frame, to avoid it.
Lovely series John, everything this year seems to be appearing early, I'm just hoping it doesn't have too much of a detrimental effect on them for the rest of the year. Those new diffusers seem to be working beautifully!
The light is beautiful, and I love the way the OOF BGs really set this guy off.
Underinformed comment: I think I would really struggle to frame an image knowing it needed to be rotated later- composition is tough enough without adding an additional spacial challenge to it , but it looks like you did a fantastic job - even the lighting and shadows work in 3 adnd 4- but I wonder if the dark at the top of 2 would have bothered you if you had shot it in this portrait oreintation - I find that a dark line on the left and bottom can "anchor" a shot, but up top it sometimes "crushes" it.
Adrian Jones wrote:
Lovely series John, everything this year seems to be appearing early, I'm just hoping it doesn't have too much of a detrimental effect on them for the rest of the year. Those new diffusers seem to be working beautifully!
Adrian
Thanks Adrian!
My big fear is one last freeze before spring -it will wipe a lot of critters and flowers out...
MichAg92 wrote:
The light is beautiful, and I love the way the OOF BGs really set this guy off.
Thanks Amy
MichAg92 wrote:
I think I would really struggle to frame an image knowing it needed to be rotated later- composition is tough enough without adding an additional spacial challenge to it , but it looks like you did a fantastic job
I'm in the habit of viewing the whole frame, and I can see the image in my head before I take it due to a second grade teacher who would crack my knuckles every time she saw me counting on my fingers during math. She'd tell me to picture the black board in my head and to this day I can still do math on that mental black board and "see" what the camera will take before I look through the view finder. So composing knowing that I'm going to turn it later isn't too difficult for me.
MichAg92 wrote:
- even the lighting and shadows work in 3 adnd 4- but I wonder if the dark at the top of 2 would have bothered you if you had shot it in this portrait oreintation - I find that a dark line on the left and bottom can "anchor" a shot, but up top it sometimes "crushes" it.
To the right of the critter was a plant that was running over the leaf (the reason for the framing in #1). So I changed my angle to shooting for a "portrait" and saw the black line in #2. I took the shot, but wondered if that line was going to be distracting so I took the MPE-65 to 3x for the last two.
I kinda got lucky with the light. I had both flash heads toward the top of the lens so I could avoid hitting things with them. Looking at those shots I might have been able to move one to the top of the lens and the other at about the 90 degree mark. But the light would have been a lot more even and I'm not so sure it would have looked as good.
