Jelly Inspiration

I was inspired by some incredible jellyfish shots that have been posted here and have placed in recent competitions. After seeing the little hitchhikers on some of those images, I spent a few of my dives in North Carolina chasing around the jellies, trying not to get stung and looking for little critters taking a ride. Look what I found!

Hey

No 2 is incredible!!

Cal

I was inspired by some incredible jellyfish shots that have been posted here and have placed in recent competitions. After seeing the little hitchhikers on some of those images, I spent a few of my dives in North Carolina chasing around the jellies, trying not to get stung and looking for little critters taking a ride. Look what I found!

Really like them both, #2 is great with the hitchhiker

# 2 ist breathtaking. Great shot!

Hi Karen!

I agree with the rest, the second image is "stunning"

Karel

#2 is special, fantastic!

Tim

Ditto with others, #2 is amazing.

I agree, #2 is wonderful. Have you considered carefully masking out the background and desaturating it to pure black? I think that combined with a little bump in saturation of the jelly/shrimp would really make this magnificent.

Regards,

Dan

I agree, #2 is wonderful. Have you considered carefully masking out the background and desaturating it to pure black? I think that combined with a little bump in saturation of the jelly/shrimp would really make this magnificent.

Dan

My photoshop skills suck but I know that would improve the image...I just can't figure out how to do it! (and I've been trying to do it for the past hour!) If you can share that info with me in a step x step manner, I would be grateful!

I am not a PS wizard and this is a "difficult" masking job, due to all of the tentacles and the traces of backscatter on the lower parts of the image.

I think my first step would be to coarsely mask out the shrimp, bell, and reproductive tentacles (the curly ones), and apply a pretty strong "dust and scratches" filter to the rest of the image. This should be able to clear up a lot of the backscatter. Careful about losing detail in the trailing tentacles.

I would then try to use "select by color range" to get as much of the background as possible. I fear that this won't be quite effective enough -- it might just take some dedicated and tedious selection with the wand tool to get this right.

In any case this won't be "easy", unfortunately.

Dan

Thanks. I'm going to work on it a bit more but the summer is filled with jelly fish so maybe I'll get another opportunity!

OT, but your galleries are wonderful. I was in Lembeh a few years ago but I just had a (totally inadequate) point-and-shoot and the visibility wasn't all that great.

I look forward to going back!

Dan

wow, you are getting way too good to talk to the rest of us...hee, hee...love number 2!!!!

#2 is awesome. I only wish I could see the tentacle ends.

Todd

After spending some time trying to clean up the image using selections, filters, and other stuff, I ended up using the good ol' burn tool. A bit tedious but the result is great.

Dan

#2 is awesome. I only wish I could see the tentacle ends.

 

Todd

yeah, I would have like to have been able to get the ends of the tenacles in but they were REALLY long and the shrimp would have been lost. When I get to "tiddying" the image up, I may take some creative liberties with that also!

Simply beautiful images.

yeah, I would have like to have been able to get the ends of the tenacles in but they were REALLY long and the shrimp would have been lost. When I get to "tiddying" the image up, I may take some creative liberties with that also!

Well its a great image. I wish it was mine.