The Real Hungry Caterpillar - unedited. Taken in the summer at the butterfly house at NHM (Just love that place). This year there seemed to be many more butterflies and many, many caterpillar (not something I had notice in previous years). Struggled with the light and sharpness of hand held so have to open the aperture right up.
First version: cropped square and just altered the shadow and highlights. Acceptable. Not entirely happy with the depth of field on the bottom right hand of the image.
Final Version - reprocessed the first week of January - I have altered my white balance setting in LR - can't believe the difference it makes (shot in auto WB) - much happier with the overall colour - the green is so much better than the grey background. Having looked again at the unedited version I have decided to go for a letterbox format, and include the baby caterpillar on the top of the leaf. Not sharp on the right hand side of the image because of the DoF but I do think it adds to the image.
He munched through that leaf in seconds - it was fascinating to watch (I came away with about 500 images of this little caterpillar - most, may I add out of focus!)
Judges Comment: Simple image, back-lighting works well, head pin sharp, letterbox format works well, however - too much to green on the left of the picture - and too light. Score: 9
The Mist - unedited. (The whole morning can be found
here). One of those lucky mornings when mother nature gives you everything on a plate - and its just your technical knowledge that let you down! Shot in raw, so adjustments to shadows and highlight must. Crop and a major clean up from my very dirty sensor.
The Mist. Final. These are the days when you are so glad you got out of bed.... and make every morning when you got out of bed and achieve nothing so very worthwhile. Love this
set of images. You may see another one entered at some point!!
Judges Comment: Nice base to the image - not too much included, Nice sky - perhaps a little too much but because of the detail it's OK, Dark tree works well to contract the bright sun. Composition good. Score: 8.5
