X marks the spotby
MrAkamaiComment by MrAkamai: Ooops, I forgot to correct some of my comments to reflect the photo entry change. My first entry was of an ant on a palm frond but it had multiple focus points so I entered this instead. But I still used my macro lens and no sharpening and no color balance.
Thanks everyone for your comments and they are very much appreciated! Glad I finally got a decent score! :) Now to address some of the comments...
Skiprow, I agree that the shot could have used more DOF. It is very shallow and I realized that during post processing. Very little I could do as it was night time. I thought I had all four points in focus but even using the camera's LCD and zoomed in it was difficult to really tell.
Digital Quixote, I really wanted to PM you during the voting but I had to restrain myself! :) It was just by chance that I placed the center of the X on an intersection of one of the thirds. If you take another look and imagine the thirds both horizontal and vertical you can see that the X does land on one of the intersections. I was looking at Jodie Coston's tutorials after the voting started and she mentioned this but I did mine more or less by mistake. So, technically, it's not centered like you said.
Overall, I wanted to use the shallow DOF to my advantage by placing focus on the four points of the X but it didn't work out as I had planned namely because all four are not focused. I also hoped that since I didn't enter a bug or flower that would give me extra points. Maybe next time...
Photographer found comment helpful.