Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by Jaded_Housewife:
a tighter crop would be nice to see the insect. i cant even tell what kind of insect it is. may have been hard to get even closer to an alligator though. lol.

Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by SandyP:
Oh this is awesome! What amazing detail and lighting. The exposure is phenomenal! Every time I try to photograph one of these creatures, I get too much muck in the water, and they always are laying in the one spot that is incredibly bright and blown out. I am TOTALLY impressed!

Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by CNovack:
Took me some time to find 'Beauty' as that she is small relation to the composition as a whole. Great capture, but you need to draw us in more. A closer crop would compell us to linger longer and look at your photo. If you have a good zoom lens I would use it to get closer to the gator (don't do it physically just let your camera do it with the zoom function) I think a tight square crop just showing the portion of his head [not his snout]above water will give us all the details of the gator and the dragonfly not to mention the detail of textures both these creatures have. You want to keep the attention focused on your main subject and that is these two creatures - not the water or the negative space they are swimming in. Next, there needs to be sharper details on the skin of the gator and the dragonfly. That can be accomplished by using a smaller aperature setting (an 8 - 16 range) to get more detail and depth of field. Maybe the original has that and sometimes due to resizing some sharpness is lost - simply using sharpen or unsharp mask will take care of that. Lastly, the reflection of the cloud in the water is greatly distracting and it takes away focus from your main subjects. Changing the angle in which you shoot (low angle or high angle) or moving a few degrees to the right or left of the subject tends to get rid of unslightly elements that contribute nothing to the overall composition.

Stormy Waters
by yakatme

Comment by IreneM:
I just love this sort of art. Perfect for the challenge and a beautiful image.

Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by digitalknight:
would like to see the blues more blue here - overall kind of a grey image. I wonder if cropping tighter would be stronger since the bug is so small in the overall scheme. The bug and the eyes would communicate what this is, so you could crop a good 75% of the photo away. Really great capture though -

Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by Kaizer:
How well timed is that?? :)

Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by Stagolee:
Nice work, love the hitchiker.

Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by mrsmaxsmart:
like the little bug on his head - nice peaceful yet ominous catch

Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by hotpasta:
no way! that looks awesome

Beauty and the Beast
by yakatme

Comment by redpanda:
I would change the title (both of them are beasts just different in size), but the photo is brilliant.