Red LadyBird, Grey Background
October 15, 2010Final post for the week. I saw a fly sitting on a leaf and thought… quick, macro photo time. Sit down, this may shock a few people but…
I didn’t have my macro lens attached at that moment.
Yes, that’s not like me… so, I quickly changed lenses, and the fly waited, and waited and then flew off (laughing no doubt). Elliot then spotted a great ladybird walking about on a conker shell. He took some photos, then I tried with the macro lens. Without a tripod, it just didn’t work at all, too much wind, hands too shaky. 😦 Luckily, I still had my pocket camera, and that did a much better macro job than my fancy lens. Simple can be much better!
So, I cropped the photo and made the background monochrome. It’s the first time I’ve tried this technique, I basically selected the ladybird with the magic wand in photoshop, inverted it and then desaturated the background. It works, but, the ladybird looks like I cut it out from another picture and stuck it on. Any tips on how I could have done this better? Thanks in advance, and…
Have a great weekend!
g r e y s q r l 
That selective color works to add drama to an awesome image. The prickly background and the shiny lady bug. Nicely done.
Thank you. 🙂
Nice job Nigel. I’m no photoshop expert, but I’m thinking you may need to blur the edges of the bug a little.
I can try and give it a go! Thanks, Wesley.
I’m not much of a photoshop expert either, I simply would have used colour pop to select the red in the ladybug to stand out, but perhaps left a faint amount of background colour, if it were brown perhaps.
Perhaps I sound like a fool, you know way more than I do.
Not at all, I don’t even know what colour pop is! 😀 I’ll take a look and try that. Thank you 🙂
I think you did a great job. Does it sound too weird if I say she looks good enough to eat! 😀
A little bit 😉
It looks great to me. I like the selective coloring. If you weren’t entirely satisfied with the total desaturated effect which I think is super but it’s your photo, you could do it on a separate layer and then reduce opacity.
I think it’s very true and slightly aggravating that sometimes our digicams work better than the expensive DSLRs.
Nicely done Nigel. I can see the issue about the edges, almost makes the little one seem placed…having said that, I still really like it! 😀
Nicely done. I like the selective colour on this one, it works!
Hello,
I am not an art critic or one who has a trained eye for what makes good photography and what doesn’t, but this photo looks really cool to me. I would love to purchase this photo from you and have it printed and gallery framed for in my new house if you would consider it. My wife loves ladybugs and loves this picture. If you have a large enough high resolution file that I could have it printed clearly on a 36″ x 48″ canvas I would like to have it in my home. Great photo!
Paul