TWO

banehawi (Critique Team)

8

19 Aug 2012 - 2:49 PM

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Its a nice shot overall Vikki, and a bonus to get more than one Bee. These are Honey Bees, you wont see Wasps on flowers collecting pollen. Wasps dont have the slightly hair covered bodies, and are longer and very aggressive. A Honey Bee will rarely sting.

The image can be improved IMO in a few small ways. For me, the red colours are very over saturated, - perhaps you did this in post processing, or you might have your camera set to a mode, such as Vivid that enhances colours, - too much in this case. Over saturated colours, while looking very exciting, actually cause the parts of the image in which they occur, to lose detail. This is because the colours "spill over" their pixel boundaries and merge with adjacent pixels, causing the loss of detail. Its slight, but when you know what to look for, it becomes very obvious.

The composition, - its better if its cropped less wide, so that the sharpest Bee, - bottom right, and the next sharpest are aligned on thirds in the frame (Rule of Thirds, - a guide that can be ignored, but understand it first, try it, and if it doesnt improve your shot, dont use it). I think is improves this image.

Exposure is quite good, but looks better slightly brighter.

The frame. Frames should not draw attention away from the subject image. if you look at frames and mattes in a shop, you will most likely see a large area thats white, or a light pastel colour, and then the plastic or wooden frame.
Try to make your frame in this style. Dont use a heavy black frame next to the image, - a small 2 or 3 pixel black looks better, and never use the dominant colour from the image in the matte area.


Ive uploaded a mod to show what I mean, - cropped, reduced the red and yellow saturation, and framed as described. You could see this on your wall!



Hope this helps, and a very good shot,


Regards



Willie

Constructive Critique!