Horse Fly Portrait

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Male Horse fly (Tabanus sp.). Clicked this to particularly show the compound eyes.

Compound eyes are composed of several thousand individual lenses called "facets". They provide a very wide field of vision and enable the animal to detect fast movements and, in some cases, polarisation of light.
[Note: An easy way to tell male horse flies from females is by looking at the eyes. A male's eyes touch each other, while females have a wide space between the eyes. Female horse flies are to be treated with caution as they feed on blood and have a very painful bite.]

Not sure whether you will agree with this composition. I accidentally got one of the legs touching the bottom of the frame, so thought of cropping to make the entire frame tighter (since the eyes are the main subject here, not the body or the habitat). Let me know what you think about the composition.

Canon 500D, Canon 100mm Macro USM
Aperture-Priority AE
Tv 1/80
Av 5.6 (for a shallow DoF to draw attention to the eyes)
EC -2/3
ISO 1600
Flash Off
Hand held

Thanks, comments and critique awaited.