A flower & a grasshopper...

[Sabyasachi Patra]

This is my analysis of Anil’s image of grasshopper with a bright red inflorescence.

This image has two points of attractions one is the red flower/inflorescence and second is the grasshopper.

The striking red colour takes away our attention from the grasshopper. So what needs to be done for a successful image design?

We have to also keep in mind that flash was used in this image, so the flash directly lights up the grasshopper and kind of overpowers it. So parts of its body is overexposed. You can see the bright white band. So the green colour in the grasshopper hasn’t come out well.

Also, the leaves are pretty dirty. So the green colour of the leaves haven’t come out well.

Depth of field in close focusing distances is pretty less. In this case the grasshopper and flower is covered in depth of field. However, as expected all the leaves are not covered by depth of field at f9. Even at f22, it would have been a challenge. So what can the photographer do while shooting and in post processing?

The standard response of a majority of photographers to such situations in post processing is what Anil adopted in the first image, namely Higher saturation, higher contrast and vignetting in the corners. The second version is brighter, not way too dark like the previous version, and it still has higher saturation which makes the leaves and grasshopper green. However, there is still lot of yellow in this image.

When I remove all these excess saturation and colour cast, I find that our eyes goes to the leaves which are not in focus, atleast the leaves in the lower portion of the frame. If some part of these leaves at the bottom were focused then it would have looked great. Unfortunately the exif details says f9 at 1/60 at ISO 400. In the 550D, I would be loathe to increase the ISO beyond 400. If there was a chance to use a stable support like a tripod/monopod then one could have taken a chance of narrow aperture. So it is actually not easy to implement what I am asking him to do.

I have done one version in colour with his full frame image with nearly realistic muddy green leaves. I am saying nearly because completely realistic means still reducing the green slightly more. This image would have looked much better if the antennae would have been in focus and sharp as that points in the direction of the top right leaf.

I am also sharing a cropped version to explain how composition wise it can improve if one can move in a bit closer.

Also, I am posting two black and white images as well.