Fly Leaf
When I was watering the neighbour’s garden this summer I came across this fly on the edge of leaf. A great subject for the macro lens. I only wish I had got better depth of field for the fly.
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Canon 5Dii, Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens, ISO100, f 4.0, 1/80th.
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burnt embers 
Wow! That lens still surprises. I love the leafy hairs and I’m eternally thankful that I am big and flies are small.
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Hi Ryan, and thanks!. It would have been fun to try this shot with the 5x macro that I rented for some of those true close ups earlier in the year, though it has to get so close to the subject that I don’t think they stick around. I suspect that you have to set it up and wait for the subject to arrive, but I don’t know for sure as I only did inanimate subjects.
The idea of, say an eagle sized fly, is not one I want to dwell on.
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Me either. Yikes!
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This is a great image. And the best thing about it is that you know what you want to differently the next time. Looking forward to it!
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I am going to need another cooperative fly. This one was sitting at right angles to this and I took some photos of it from above but then when I realised this could be a good angle I moved around for this shot. The fly turned to watch me, and just posed until I was done, though not long enough for me to get multiple shots. A tripod would have helped with this one too – macro without a tripod (and without image stabilisation) is really pushing things for my and the way I hold a camera (shakily much of the time).
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LOVE this, Ehpem! Was this a complex photo to process? It kind of takes on a low-key feel to it. Really interesting shapes and lines here… not to mention that to a Toad, a fly is considered a delicacy. Pass the Grey Poupon, please?
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Hi Toad. It is one of the first I worked on with LR4 in August and to answer you question I have had to look at the edit history. It includes cropping, conversion to black and white and pulling down some levels to get the background black, sharpening and those kinds of usual things. The final tweak was a very small amount of masking of the darker areas of the fly wings and some of the detail in the shadow under its body to brighten them up a bit and get the legs a bit more visible. I had a pretty dark background in the original which helped a lot, as did the shallow DoF. So, overall not what I would call a complex workflow on this one.
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Wow, Ehpem, the results are fabulous. This kind of leads into something I really believe in; trying to do as much of the work in photography as possible before and during the shutter click. Always makes post-processing easier, I find anyways. Thanks for the details on that, I was wondering!!…
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“Science fictionnnn, (Wah, wah, wah), double feature…” So alien and cool!!!!!
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Katherine, you seem to have a certain eye for sci-fi references in my photos! I can see it with this one – and with insects in general – I suspect they have inspired a lot of sci-fi visuals over the years.
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I never really thought I was into sci-fi as a genre but I look back on my film choices over the years and there are a lot of that type of film in my canon of favs. It is a very evocative pic. Another one of yours I love.
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Ohhhh, what a very cool shot! While I agree perhaps a little more DoF would have been nice, I strongly believe the image as presented is great!
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Thanks David! There are many things I like about it enough to have posted in despite the DoF issue. Glad you see it that way too!
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