Christmas in St. Croix

I love to photograph these guys! Drop the hammer!!!

Nice shot! I find the bright yellow areas in the background distracting, however. A little work in Photoshop to tune it down a bit?

Regards,

Example attached - I hope.

Regards,

Nothing like "too much" depth of field eh? :-) I have the same comment as Don regarding the background. But heck, sometimes you just can't get down enough without bashing the coral.

Cheers

James

Don and James -

That is a really useful point. Shooting super tiny critters, it can be really challenging to get the subject perfectly in focus. Therefore, I always set the aperture to min to maximize DOF. I will experiment with larger apertures for subjects like these, which are common enough that I need not fear missing the opportunity.

As far as getting low enough, I was shooting almost level with the subject but the coral protruded up and above the worm as it often does.

Thanks for the constuctive critique.

Don - what method did you use to work on the background?

Don - what method did you use to work on the background?

Kasey -

I used the "magic wand" tool in PS7 set to "noncontiguous" to select the lightest areas. I then feathered and copied the selection to its own layer and used the Image/Adjustments/Brightness&Contrast to reduce the brightness of the copied layer by 50% and increase the contrast 10%. I then merged the layers.

Regards,