Constructive criticism on composition. Please!

Please find attached a pic I took in Similan last Christmas.

I would appreciate your honest thoughts and suggestions

for improvement.

Thomas

Foreground a lttle overblown, could be cropped tighter.

I don't like this as much as your eel. I agree with Dave on both points. It is difficult to make out details in the gobys. Are you using the macro lens?

This photo was taken with the Titan and macro lens. It demonstrates a ratio of at least 1:1 that the system can acquire. I have a few images that are even tighter than this one, but not at hand right now.

sorry forgot the pic

ugh! not sure what happened to that upload. I'll try again

I took this picture with my E-20 Titan without the macro lense. Now I realize I should

have spent 20 minutes at that motive bracketing, use the macro, play with the ROC

and strobe angles. I will certainly do that next time.

That was a nice shot Kasey.

I took this photo with the macro.

NICE!!! I can never get those damn blenny's to keep still

As far as the origianal image, I think you did a good job on a really impossible situation.

I agree that it needs to be tighter cropped, and is a tad over, but my two big nits you couldn't do anything about.

1: Yellow on yellow makes for terrible separation. Hard to pull out the subject.

2: The fish look joined. It looks like a two headed minimonster

Like i said, I dont think you could do much about that though. You might try a tight crop, select the fish invert and blur the background a bit. I am not sure this would work, but it would give you the seperation, assuming you have enough resolution in the original to try it.

Don't you just love those blennys (or is it blennies?). They always have that "come & take a picture" look on their faces.

Nice shot.

Agree with last comment. Yellow on Yellow is difficult contrast works best.

They always have that "come & take a picture" look on their faces.

The problem is that they usually don't wait until you take the pictures.

Here is a rough (very rough) example of what I ws talking about. I made a very loose selection just for demo, inverted it and blurred the background. Than I did a curves adjustment on the background to darken it, and a seperate curve adjustment on the fish.

Not a lot of file to work with, but I just thought I would show you what I was talking about. I am not sure it actually doesn't hurt the original.

2:  The fish look joined.    It looks like a two headed minimonster    

It does now!

Told Ya!

Here's my quick attempt.

Awesome idea. you cut and moved the fish?

Cheater! Sorry the purist in me coming out.

Unfortunately I've lost the 3D from the branch though with cloning. It was a quick effort though. With a bit more time it could be done right.

Maybe I should change signature to 'manipulate not manhandle'.

Cheater! Sorry the purist in me coming out.

Manipulate not Manhandle.

Could be a good signature that.

Thanks for the many good ideas (and manipulating secrets..).

Yellow and yellow is difficult. I have even more problem with

red-on-red. I have similar shot with velvia and you can almost

not separate out the fish (yes it is a goby) at all. That's why I

think I should have played with the strobe angles to try to get

some shadow on textures etc...

Bobjarman. Nice composition. Thanks.