Hunting

I found this little guy yesterday while out walking. Shot with my Digital Rebel and EF 100-400mm IS.

How lovely s/he looks in the duckweed. The limited DOF just makes it pop right out of there. Looks like a young 'un. I can't think of a thing to improve it - maybe just a tiny crop to get the pinkish red out of the bottom of the frame.

Hate to mooch off Iguanamom but everything she said, I say too. :) At first I thought," no, I like the red" but then I scrolled the photo down to hide it and it definately looks better. This is a very focused and amazing shot. Your control of DOF is right on.

Kit

Yes, that darn stick on the bottom (the red blur) was really frustrating me yesterday. I plan to go back and work on the crop a little more. I want to keep the 3:2 aspect ratio for prints but when I try to crop the composition gets pretty darn tight. If only my Rebel had a 100% viewfinder, I thought I had the stick taken care of until I got home and looked at the shot on screen. I was a bit disappointed about the stick after all that crawling around in the mud.

Thanks for the kind words all.

Greg

Greg,
Great shot. I agree that cropping the lower part out would not be the best.
Hope you don't mind but I did a quick edit with PS7 and "got the red out".
Took about 20 seconds. Used "quick mask" then paint brush to shade over the red areas, switch to edit in standard mode, inverted the selection and then used "hue/saturation" editing for Reds only.
Regards,
Bill

Thanks for that information, it was very helpful.

Greg

Really neat, Very interesting to see this and take in all the textures and the little green leaves in the water... I was looking at it, and looked back up to read your text, and I think it blinked at me!