Is this picture interesting ....

[PhotoLover]

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I can't decide. I kinda like it .... the lone dragonfly on that sparse background and the colors work for me. My spouse is like ... no. What do others think ... my feelings are not going to be hurt by a negative response

 

[bleirer]

I like the background but there could be a lot less of if, as more doesn't add anything new to the story. Do you have a closer one.

 

[PhotoLover]

I like the background but there could be a lot less of if, as more doesn't add anything new to the story. Do you have a closer one.

No, I'd have to crop. I took that just for grins and really liked the background colors and texture when I opened it up on the computer, but yeah, too sparse. I can play with crops for input to some later picture of a similar nature to figure out a good ratio of dragonfly to background. But I do like that background.

 

[Len Shepherd]

I'd have to crop. I took that just for grins and really liked the background colors and texture when I opened it up on the computer,

Do you want us to look at the background texture - on its own IMO not enough.

but yeah, too sparse.

Do you want us to look at the insect - if yes as you acknowledge it is too sparse (small) in the frame.

Crop to about 25% of the picture area and try flipping so the insect looks right should enable you to make the most of both features in a stronger image.

 

[PhotoLover]

Do you want us to look at the background texture - on its own IMO not enough.

Do you want us to look at the insect - if yes as you acknowledge it is too sparse (small) in the frame.

Crop to about 25% of the picture area and try flipping so the insect looks right should enable you to make the most of both features in a stronger image.

I can certainly crop it, but I'm not clear on why flipping it makes it better.

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[Viathelens]

For me the subject would need to be better defined by being larger yet still being sharp. I'm more of a "fill the frame" type. But I suppose it could be a minimalist photo.

 

[PhotoLover]

For me the subject would need to be better defined by being larger yet still being sharp. I'm more of a "fill the frame" type. But I suppose it could be a minimalist photo.

Right, my question restated might be, is this a minimalist photo ... and if not what could make it so, if one went for that kind of thing?

Or is it just not interesting enough even if zoomed tighter with more pixels to have lots of detail in the dragonfly? Perhaps the subject needs to be more interesting than a dragonfly, even if the ratio of critter to background were "better."

Most of my photos I'm like everybody else, trying to fill the frame.

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[Butlerkid]

Right, my question restated might be, is this a minimalist photo ... and if not what could make it so, if one went for that kind of thing?

Or is it just not interesting enough even if zoomed tighter with more pixels to have lots of detail in the dragonfly? Perhaps the subject needs to be more interesting than a dragonfly, even if the ratio of critter to background were "better."

Most of my photos I'm like everybody else, trying to fill the frame.

View attachment 68803

Way too much crop, IMHO............

 

[PhotoLover]

Way too much crop, IMHO............

That's barely cropped, actually; I was close. The camera thinks I was focused at 420 mm.

One can see the difference in tastes here. I kinda like the tight shot, though of course I have lots that are not that tight.

But I can extend the question! Okay, so we don't like the minimalist shot, how tight is too tight on the "standard" shot! I think Goldilocks had this problem......

 

[Len Shepherd]

I can certainly crop it, but I'm not clear on why flipping it makes it better.

View attachment 68802

There is a theory – which in reality does not always work – that as in the west we read left to right an image like this one looks best with the dragonfly looking right.
It takes about five seconds flip the image to see which you prefer.

With the larger image size (I prefer this to the original) it is easier to zoom in.
Focus may be no towards the rear wing rather than the dragonflies head.

 

[PhotoLover]

There is a theory – which in reality does not always work – that as in the west we read left to right an image like this one looks best with the dragonfly looking right.
It takes about five seconds flip the image to see which you prefer.

With the larger image size (I prefer this to the original) it is easier to zoom in.
Focus may be no towards the rear wing rather than the dragonflies head.

Fair enough, as I think about it, I probably prefer left to right images as well, though my preference is perhaps stronger with moving subjects. I slightly recropped; it's another matter of taste how far off center the dragonfly is.

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[PhotoLover]

Way too much crop, IMHO............

That's barely cropped, actually; I was close. The camera thinks I was focused at 420 mm.

One can see the difference in tastes here. I kinda like the tight shot, though of course I have lots that are not that tight.

But I can extend the question! Okay, so we don't like the minimalist shot, how tight is too tight on the "standard" shot! I think Goldilocks had this problem......

I assume something like this is your preference?

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[Butlerkid]

The crop is fine, but I see no need to flip the image horizontally. I would prefer that the head and eye be sharper as the focus point seems a bit in front of the head.

 

[PhotoLover]

The crop is fine, but I see no need to flip the image horizontally. I would prefer that the head and eye be sharper as the focus point seems a bit in front of the head.

For the new one I just posted? I didn't flip it, it came that way. As for sharpness, I agree you want focus on the eye, but the head and eye looks very sharp on my 5k monitor at the full resolution; I don't see a problem with it. Ideally, I probably should have been stopped down a bit more on that photo; I was less than 12 feet away and DOF is still quite shallow at that distance with that lens.

Or are you talking about the recropped/flipped original image? It's a little hard to get great sharpness on that because of the amount of cropping needed.


Lots of good comments everybody, keep'em coming!

 

[samknutson]

Yes it is interesting and I agree with the direction you have already been nudged to crop and fill more of the frame. How much is personal preference but the initial picture just felt empty and didn't let you appreciate the nice sharp capture of a small subject you made. I have tried to catch them in flight but those little bugs are fast!

 

[bleirer]

For the new one I just posted? I didn't flip it, it came that way. As for sharpness, I agree you want focus on the eye, but the head and eye looks very sharp on my 5k monitor at the full resolution; I don't see a problem with it. Ideally, I probably should have been stopped down a bit more on that photo; I was less than 12 feet away and DOF is still quite shallow at that distance with that lens.

Or are you talking about the recropped/flipped original image? It's a little hard to get great sharpness on that because of the amount of cropping needed.


Lots of good comments everybody, keep'em coming!

On that recent one, the sharpest focus is on part of the front wing. The eye is slightly missed.

 

[bleirer]

Fair enough, as I think about it, I probably prefer left to right images as well, though my preference is perhaps stronger with moving subjects. I slightly recropped; it's another matter of taste how far off center the dragonfly is.

View attachment 68831

As far as where to place the area of emphasis, the discussion linked below might give some ideas. One way to try would be the point where a diagonal of the full rectangle crosses a diagonal of an imaginary square formed from the right or left side. Another way to get a left to right sweet spot would be to take the diagonals of the rectangle and to find the points along the diagonal halfway from the center to the corners. Join 2 points to form the vertical line that would relate to the golden section. Or of course you could use what felt right to your eye.

Thread 'Rabatment of the rectangle as a composition aid' https://bcgforums.com/index.php?threads/rabatment-of-the-rectangle-as-a-composition-aid.26865/

 

[PhotoLover]

On that recent one, the sharpest focus is on part of the front wing. The eye is slightly missed.

I hear you guys, I genuinely truly do, but on my very high res monitor the original RAW image (which I cropped to about 4600 x 3000, which is then compressed to quite a bit smaller for this forum) shows the eye as being sharp, the little fuzz on the dragonfly head is sharp, etc. If there is a lack of sharpness on the eye, it's undetectable to me. The compressed version here for the forum looks a lot worse, sharpness wise, everywhere. I can't prove that to you with the posted image but it does. Looking at the full sized image at 200%, I think the exact focal point was probably the base of the trailing wing on the right side of the critter. And that focal point is why the abdomen is in focus and really the head also, as I was pretty much directly side-on (well, the posted image just looks soft all around).

At a distance of a little over 10 feet, I should have stopped to 8.0 (or more!) anyway to give a smidgen more DOF (had enough light) but I really don't think focus was missed here, whatever problems the image might have in general. He posed for a little, so I had time to tweak a bit.

 

[PhotoLover]

As far as where to place the area of emphasis, the discussion linked below might give some ideas. One way to try would be the point where a diagonal of the full rectangle crosses a diagonal of an imaginary square formed from the right or left side. Another way to get a left to right sweet spot would be to take the diagonals of the rectangle and to find the points along the diagonal halfway from the center to the corners. Join 2 points to form the vertical line that would relate to the golden section. Or of course you could use what felt right to your eye.

Thread 'Rabatment of the rectangle as a composition aid' https://bcgforums.com/index.php?threads/rabatment-of-the-rectangle-as-a-composition-aid.26865/

I actually skimmed that thread, found it interesting, and plan to make time to read some of the materials referenced. But short term it seemed like a lot of work ... so I just tend to put things at the intersections using the golden ratio crop guide in Lightroom.

 

[bleirer]

I hear you guys, I genuinely truly do, but on my very high res monitor the original RAW image (which I cropped to about 4600 x 3000, which is then compressed to quite a bit smaller for this forum) shows the eye as being sharp, the little fuzz on the dragonfly head is sharp, etc. If there is a lack of sharpness on the eye, it's undetectable to me. The compressed version here for the forum looks a lot worse, sharpness wise, everywhere. I can't prove that to you with the posted image but it does. Looking at the full sized image at 200%, I think the exact focal point was probably the base of the trailing wing on the right side of the critter. And that focal point is why the abdomen is in focus and really the head also, as I was pretty much directly side-on (well, the posted image just looks soft all around).

At a distance of a little over 10 feet, I should have stopped to 8.0 (or more!) anyway to give a smidgen more DOF (had enough light) but I really don't think focus was missed here, whatever problems the image might have in general. He posed for a little, so I had time to tweak a bit.

If you have Photoshop you can apply a focus selection and move the slider to see which areas emerge first as being in focus. My view is it the autofocus caught the wing since it was closer, but it only matters that you are happy with it. In a critique one has to be ready to take some lumps.

 

[PhotoLover]

If you have Photoshop you can apply a focus selection and move the slider to see which areas emerge first as being in focus. My view is it the autofocus caught the wing since it was closer, but it only matters that you are happy with it. In a critique one has to be ready to take some lumps.

I do appreciate the comments -- I asked for them!

Thanks for pointing out the photoshop select focus -- I haven't used that before. On the full-size image, the very first thing the slider shows is sort of the base/middle of the nearside trailing wing and further left the middle of the abdomen, which is kind of contradictory, since the wing is clearly in front of that part of body; it also shows part of the leading edge of the front wing on the far side. Next thing to show up is the base of the near side wing, then thorax just behind head and the top of the eyes, then the rest of the head. I'm not sure exactly what the in-focus range number means; when you bring the dialogue box up the slider is at the midpoint, 3.5, and everything except parts of the wings are shown. Playing with the slider, range 2 is about when the full eye appears. So this supports your comment that the wing is where the focus was, though I wasn't really disputing that; it looked like base of wing to me, but they show up very close per the slider.

The real question is not exactly where the autofocus caught, but how much of the picture is actually sharp. And using the full size image, I believe the eyes are "sharp." Whether they are "sharp enough" to make the image good technically is a reasonable question. But, honestly, it looks a lot better not compressed so much. I mean, I have lots of dragonfly pictures where the eyes are not sharp and I do look for that.

 

[bleirer]

I do appreciate the comments -- I asked for them!

Thanks for pointing out the photoshop select focus -- I haven't used that before. On the full-size image, the very first thing the slider shows is sort of the base/middle of the nearside trailing wing and further left the middle of the abdomen, which is kind of contradictory, since the wing is clearly in front of that part of body; it also shows part of the leading edge of the front wing on the far side. Next thing to show up is the base of the near side wing, then thorax just behind head and the top of the eyes, then the rest of the head. I'm not sure exactly what the in-focus range number means; when you bring the dialogue box up the slider is at the midpoint, 3.5, and everything except parts of the wings are shown. Playing with the slider, range 2 is about when the full eye appears. So this supports your comment that the wing is where the focus was, though I wasn't really disputing that; it looked like base of wing to me, but they show up very close per the slider.

The real question is not exactly where the autofocus caught, but how much of the picture is actually sharp. And using the full size image, I believe the eyes are "sharp." Whether they are "sharp enough" to make the image good technically is a reasonable question. But, honestly, it looks a lot better not compressed so much. I mean, I have lots of dragonfly pictures where the eyes are not sharp and I do look for that.

The reason it seems contradictory has to the angle of the camera relative to the subject. I think of the plane of sharp focus as being just that, an infinitely thin plane pararallel to the plane of the sensor. At least in theory. There can only be one thin plane of critical focus, so the parts of the subject parallel to the sensor on the plane will be sharpest even if not near each other. The rest is a range of acceptable sharpness that varies with how close you look and how good your eyes are. But ideally you try to focus on the eye except it keeps moving around.

In real lenses there can be curvature of field where the plane is wobbly, but we can't really control that.

 

[PhotoLover]

The reason it seems contradictory has to the angle of the camera relative to the subject. I think of the plane of sharp focus as being just that, an infinitely thin plane pararallel to the plane of the sensor. At least in theory. There can only be one thin plane of critical focus, so the parts of the subject parallel to the sensor on the plane will be sharpest even if not near each other. The rest is a range of acceptable sharpness that varies with how close you look and how good your eyes are. But ideally you try to focus on the eye except it keeps moving around.

In real lenses there can be curvature of field where the plane is wobbly, but we can't really control that.

All true. Theoretically the DOF for that camera/lens at that distance is something like 1/3 of an inch, which is not much, and of course some in front that infinitely thin plane, some behind.

With the original image, at 200% the dragonfly looks quite sharp to me, starting from the left about midway between the tip of the tail and the base of the trailing wing on the near side up through the head. The tip of the branch is sharp. The right side legs are sharp. I would hypothesize that the head of the thing is ever so slightly closer to me than the tail as is the tip of the branch versus lower on the branch, but things generally pretty square to the camera considering that DOF. I realize you think I am just being a bit defensive here (though I'm really not that attached to this particular shot), but I do have access to additional information -- the original image.

The main thing I'm noting here is that I probably want to be 8.0 or more when taking shots this close with that lens combination, as while I think the eyes are okay, it's hard to get everything in focus. Of course, my dSLRs do not have eye focus, so all I can do in this situation is single point focus and be as precise as possible. Does eye tracking on the Z8 and Z9 work on insects? It seems like this would be a potential win for much insect photography.

(I can also look at post-processing techniques a bit; this was done entirely in lightroom, with extra clarity and texture applied to the dragonfly, but just the usual lightroom sharpening; it's possible more aggressive sharpening would look better ... or perhaps merely overprocessed. I used the forum export preset to generate the actual posted image).

Thanks again for continuing the dialogue.

 

[jeffnles1]

Photo Lover,
I think your photos and crops are all OK. I believe the real issue here is it's a photo of a dragonfly on a stick, kind of like a photo of a bird on a branch. There are millions of photos exactly like it and while the blue dasher dragonfly is a beautiful creature, the image is, at the end of the day, a dragonfly on a stick. Would I keep it in my library? Probably. I have a lot of dragonflies on sticks that I've shot over the years. I find them beautiful and in the winter, I like to look back through summer images and reminisce on warmer days of summer.

Now, if the dasher was eating another insect, flying into or away from the branch, tilting its head like they frequently do (makes them look inquisitive) or any other activity or unusual pose then it would be much more interesting.
Since your original question wasn't about the quality of the photograph but "is this picture interesting" that is how I'm trying to frame my response.

Good photo, just not overly interesting.

Hope this helps.
Jeff

 

[PhotoLover]

Photo Lover,
I think your photos and crops are all OK. I believe the real issue here is it's a photo of a dragonfly on a stick, kind of like a photo of a bird on a branch. There are millions of photos exactly like it and while the blue dasher dragonfly is a beautiful creature, the image is, at the end of the day, a dragonfly on a stick. Would I keep it in my library? Probably. I have a lot of dragonflies on sticks that I've shot over the years. I find them beautiful and in the winter, I like to look back through summer images and reminisce on warmer days of summer.

Now, if the dasher was eating another insect, flying into or away from the branch, tilting its head like they frequently do (makes them look inquisitive) or any other activity or unusual pose then it would be much more interesting.
Since your original question wasn't about the quality of the photograph but "is this picture interesting" that is how I'm trying to frame my response.

Good photo, just not overly interesting.

Hope this helps.
Jeff

Jeff,

Honestly, I tend to agree, I have lots of "dragonfly on a stick" pictures .. I take a lot of them this time of year when I find the birding a bit lacking ... but lots of dragonflies out there! I specifically asked about the original image because I thought the background was more interesting than usual and wondered if there was a somewhat more intriguing image lurking. But perhaps not. I also have a couple of dragonfly in flight pictures - I posted one - and they are obviously a lot more dynamic. And a few Halloween pennants on a stick against green backgrounds which look kinda nice colorwise. Good point about shots where they are tilting their heads, I should go back and see if I have anything like that. Sometimes head-on shots are more interesting (and I'm not that wedded to this one either, just an example ...):

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I actually have a somewhat unusual photo of a dragonfly being consumed by a small spider I should post ...