A few years back I was trying to catch some morning/golden hour shots of the flowers on a hosta plant. The wind and the clouds weren’t permitting many great opportunities , so I left the tripod and had some brunch. When I got back it was almost 11:00 AM and the golden hours had certainly passed. For some reason, I just happened to notice I was being watched. So without moving the tripod, I focused on my watcher for just one shot before gathering up the gear. I forgot I had this until I found the file on a SD card I hadn’t reformatted. This was pretty hard to decide on what crop to use. The obstruction on the right is an azalea bush, BTW.
The crop is indeed an interesting choice to make. I always fall back on 5:4 when in doubt and I do like the azalea being a part of the peek-a-boo vibe. Trying to balance it out is tricky though.
I decided to try and keep the light to reflect the time of day this was taken (10:75 10:57 in the morning), so no warm glow but natural, cooler greens.
Mantis needed masking to stand out against the background. Some leaves were to light, darkened to lead the eyes in the right direction. Vignette around Mantis too. Tone equalizer dodging and burning often looks funky (leaf up in the left). Dodging and burning with masks and RGB Curves looks a lot better. Still getting to know DT.
