Under a Crown of Thorns

This Crown of Thorns, Kona Coast of Hawaii, slipped from his hold and was flipped over by the surge. Notice the two shrimp.

Nik V, 2 - SB 105's (1@ full, 1@ 1/4) 35mm @ f22, 1:2 Macro Tube, Manual Exposure.

Jesus, they are tiny... Great shot of its infamous polyps-sucking stomach opening too.

Sometimes you can find another variety of shrimp living on its 'skin' ...

Your shrimp looks very similar. Do you happen to know what they are called?

Sid & Sally!

I think they are members of the Emperor shrimp family. They are the same types that live on Spanish Dancer Nudibranch.

My Critique:

I personally like this photograph for a number of reasons. Its composition is such that I feel the eye is attracted to the brighter orange areas of the photograph but the shape of the creature makes your eye follow it down to the mouth where the shrimp are located. Artistically its colors and texture are very pleasing. From what I can tell in this small photograph, it seems to be quite sharp. You also have the added benefit of making it a scientifically interesting photograph.

My only gripe--the photo seems too dark. You might be able to improve on this with some careful levels adjust in Photoshop, but ultimately I think better strobe placement would have made the mouth area pop out in color and that would have made this great photograph even better.

Great job on a fantastic photograph and on not getting hurt from being so close to this venomous creature.

laz217, thanks for the critique. You pointed out things that I haven't thought about. I could tell you a story about the venemous part, but my dive buddy at the time might get embarrassed.

I'm working with a new LCD monitor and everything looks fine here. When I try to print or email, they look considerably darker. I have tried to sync my monitor by using the Adobe Gamma calibration tool but have decided that I will need to buy the Colorvision Spyder. Actually the slide looks much brighter and produced a nice enlargement.

Hi Scottyb,

I was going to mention about the strobe settings you chose at point of shoot, I was curious, why you didn't go for TTL.

The monitor problem: Do you have a generic setting for LCD monitors in the scanner software/twain interface?

laz217, thanks for the critique. You pointed out things that I haven't thought about. I could tell you a story about the venemous part, but my dive buddy at the time might get embarrassed.

 

I'm working with a new LCD monitor and everything looks fine here. When I try to print or email, they look considerably darker. I have tried to sync my monitor by using the Adobe Gamma calibration tool but have decided that I will need to buy the Colorvision Spyder. Actually the slide looks much brighter and produced a nice enlargement.

Color correcting with an LCD could bring along some problems. I have both a top-end LCD and a monitor (dual monitor setup) and there are noticable differences between them, even after color correcting. From what I've noticed, LCDs tend to display images much brighter than a monitor does and there is also a noticeable difference in sharpness between the two (favoring the LCD in this case).

Just a couple of days ago I was trying to print out an image of a Queen Angel and the printout showed a flourescent purple around the crown, the eye and down the front of its body that didn't show up on my LCD. Sure enough, as soon as I moved the image over to my monitor the color became more apparent. I have been told this before by a professional photographer and now I can attest to it---LCDs seem to have a limited range of colors.

If you're serious about color correction you might want to consider investing in at least a small monitor. I run a dual monitor setup in WinXP and find this to help me greatly not only in getting correct printouts but verifying what others will see on their screen whenever I'm preparing something to be displayed on the web.