Spiral reed from garden pond. Set on a table outdoors with copper beech hedge as background.
Canon 10D with Canon 100mm f2.8 macro and 550EX speedlight. One of 206 attempts ;-)
Editing:
Process Raw file using Rawshooter +0.37 exposure stops, +13 shadow contrast, +20 highlight contrast
PS Work:
Brightness and Contrast plus Levels and Hue/Sat to lose the background and bring out the reed and ladybird.
Sharpenned
Couldn't lose the background beech hedge altogether, but it will do.
File Name
CRW_5160.CRW
Camera Model Name
Canon EOS 10D
Shooting Date/Time
22/04/2005 10:10:18
Shooting Mode
Manual
Tv( Shutter Speed )
1/30
Av( Aperture Value )
16
Metering Mode
Center-weighted averaging
ISO Speed
100
Lens
100.0mm
Focal Length
100.0mm
Image Size
3072x2048
Image Quality
RAW
Flash
On
Flash Type
External E-TTL
Flash Exposure Compensation
-1/2
Red-eye Reduction
On
Shutter curtain sync
1st-curtain sync
White Balance
Auto
AF Mode
Manual Focus
Parameters
Contrast Normal
Sharpness Normal
Color saturation Normal
Color tone Normal
Color Space
Adobe RGB
File Size
4748KB
Statistics
Place: 2 out of 492 Avg (all users): 7.4908 Avg (commenters): 8.1905 Avg (participants): 7.3561 Avg (non-participants): 7.6477 Views since voting: 13565 Views during voting: 615 Votes: 381 Comments: 127 Favorites: 40 (view)
woohoo, i put this when voting...
wow this is lovely. I love the whole composition, and colours and it's interesting...a 10 from me, and think this could get a ribbon.well done. Just had to add it to my favourites.
I guessed right for a change, well done it was my favourite.So congrats on the ribbon, well done
Many thanks for all the comments, I've never had so many ;-)
A lot of you didn't like the red spot, and to be honest neither do I, but the basic edit rules prohibit spot editting. I tried to lose as much as possible through careful curves manipulation, but couldn't get rid of the brightest without destroying the main subjects.
In my notes you will see that this was one of 206 attempts. I had 5 different ladybirds and 3 different reed stems in all sorts of configurations. The hardest part however was getting the ladybird into the right place, I used a soft artists brush to coax her into place. Several didn't like the idea and refused to sign the model release and just flew off ;-)
I would just like to thank all the DPC community for voting for me and congratulate keegbow and bear_music for the excellent entris and ribbons.
Way to go. What a beauty of an image with such strong composition. A haunting rendition of these color opposites, that is in the subtractic system. Congratulations on your red.
This ought to be a top ten--at least! I love the path in the image, the lovely color on the ladybug, very crisp. (Though I wonder if it might appear too crisp, or oversharp.) Excellently seen!
certailny a standout in this challenge ... great pairing of the beautiful natural spiral of veg with lovable wee lady bug. xmas color combo against the black background completes the high appeal.
I love the fact that the subject is entirely in focus and no part of the green stem blurs out.
the focus enables my eye to travel up and down the spiral stem comfortably.
Very very neat. I like the reflected light on the stem and ladybug. Very interesting composition. The only thing keeping this from a 10 is the red spot at the top left (yeah, I'm being picky.)
This is the best picture I have seen in this competition so far. How the straw (?) leads to the insect. The dark background is good and makes the picture more alive since you aren't making it totally black. I like that. Well done!
Very striking composition - the shape of that spiral within the frame, punctuated so perfectly by the ladybird, is wonderful and the utterly black background emphasises it very well. The strong lighting also lends to the confident and upbeat feeling of this image. I'm not sure what the red blob to upper left is but I think it would be better cloned out. The only downside are the jaggies along the edge of the green which are presumably compression artifacts and not present in the full-sized original file?
one of my favorites in this challenge. the reflections/blotches in the upper part of the picture are distracting. but i'll still give you a 10 for compostition, color, theme appropriateness.
too bad you caught a little lens flare in the upper left corner. Focus also seems to be a little off on the lady bug, but maybe some detail was just lost in down sizing.
I love this shot. It's a wonderful example of use of negative space yet still has a very engaging use of the space and of course a solid composition. 9
Very nice composition and sharpness, spot on with just about everything but too bad about the flare up in the left and right corner of the shot, I know this is with the basic editing rules so nothing you could have done about it but use a lens hood (or something else to block out the flare) but the fact is that the flare is there and it hurts the image Still pretty good and better than most images in the challenge.
Simple, in focus, great colors and not a flat background. I have the same plant but its still brown. and no ladybugs. sigh... The ladybug looks slightly over saturated but the lighting makes up for it. One of the top images in the challenge for me. 10 Good luck!
This is so pretty and elegant...the only thing I think may distract me is the blurry red spot in the upper left hand corner...is that that spot of red spoken about in the title?...or is it the ladybug? The light is very nice, I love the highlights on the green.
wow this is lovely. I love the whole composition, and colours and it's interesting...a 10 from me, and think this could get a ribbon.well done. Just had to add it to my favourites.
Very nice. I like how the green and red colors stand out. The spots in the background a little distracting. Too bad those couldn't have been edited out. Good job!
A Twist of Green and a Spot of Red
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