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Konica Minolta Users | all galleries >> KM Challenges >> #4: Alone - hosted by Ferenc Mogor >> #4: Alone - Competition > Licensed to Scale by John down under, ant whisperer
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02-MAR-2004

Licensed to Scale by John down under, ant whisperer

a very small part of my garden in Oz

For the title, I decided on this parody on the James Bond theme. It relates to both the ant's activity and mine. The 007 connection also describes the daring and exciting undertaking of scaling a structure high off the ground, and being a loner in that pursuit, which works with the Ch #4 theme. My ant is very interested in Mihajlo's Beemer in his Transporter pic. ;o)

I framed this shot to capture the whole flower, then cropped this way afterwards for a different perspective and to show more of the A1's macro capability. I used the inbuilt flash in P-TTL mode with tissue over the flash to soften the lighting a bit.

In PSE2, I used local contrast enhancement on all of the pic except the ant (before resizing down to post) with USM at 20%, 50 pixel radius and 1 level. I did the ant separately with a 25 pixel radius to avoid destroying the highlights. Having shot soft, I used some additional USM at 100%, 0.5 pixels and 1 level for sharpening once the pic was resized to post. The total USM combination would be too much for many pics, but works ok for the nature of this one.

Minolta DiMAGE A1 ,Minolta 7.2-50.8mm (28-200mm eq) GT APO
1/200s f/8.0 at 50.5mm iso100 with Flash full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
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Konica Minolta Users11-Mar-2004 10:13
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From John down under
Hi guys. Yes, I was looking to do something a little different to see what people thought and it is good to see some different reactions. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Cheers, John
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Luminus 11-Mar-2004 07:37
I think the size of the ant is good to establish the scale (no pun intended) and the theme....although it's perhaps too far down the lower right corner to lead the viewer's eyes to it? At the first glance, I didn't even see the ant!
Guest 10-Mar-2004 22:41
John,leaving your pic a bit aside with the need to come back 3-4 times, well, now I'm still in the middle of the puzzle game whether to see the theme of "alone" or not? ...OK, its on my lips now,...something is missing for me to say that the capture is reflecting the original theme, maybe the insect is too small, or the flower is too big! Cheers, Feri.
Konica Minolta Users10-Mar-2004 00:36
Well done JDU, a good eye for the alone theme. The background contrasting with the yellow and the red helps this picture stand out. Good framing choice for the ant IMHO. The ROT can be broken successfully.
Jim Rickards
Guest 03-Mar-2004 16:09
And you have achieved that!
Konica Minolta Users03-Mar-2004 10:47
Plamen, the detail of the ant is what I was hoping would attract people to want to open this pic for a look, then see that there is more to see. Cheers, John
Konica Minolta Users03-Mar-2004 10:45
Thanks to all three of you for taking the time to look and comment. Niamh, I look forward to your next artistic effort, maybe one with some white boofy hair to keep Molly company when I put her in here again (you didn't think I was going to leave her out altogether, did you)? ;o) For Claudio, this is technically an autumn flower, but I agree it could be mistaken for a spring flower to the untrained eye. ;o) For Smatty, it may not surprise you to hear that I had planned to take a shot of a single wine bottle in my wine rack. That may happen yet. ;o) For this one, I was starting to think it might be easier to PhotoShop Molly into an ant than to wait for a real one to wander into a suitable spot and hope that it turned out ok. That was, of course, until a real ant happened along and I was there at the right time with my exposures already worked out from a test shot or two. I couldn't wait to see whether the picture was clear as I couldn't tell from the viewfinder and not only was the ant moving, but the whole flower was moving a bit in the wind. I would have preferred the ant to be venturing out along the top of the flower at the left a la The Lion King, but as you can guess, I was still pleased to see that there was no motion blur to speak of and I got a clear ant anyway. To be honest, I did help a couple of ants into position y plucking them off other parts of the plant to put them on the flower, but that was only after I saw a couple on the flower to start with. I had imagined looking down into the flower at an ant, but I think this is better as the shot into the flower would have had real DOF problems and I might have missed a clear ant or coloured parts of teh flower. In the end, the ant helped me make the right decision. :o) John down under
Smatty 03-Mar-2004 08:29
Oh my god! This time he photoshopped Molly into an ant :-)

Great framing, great shot. Now if you work hard on your wine bottles, you might take the last single bottle remaining as entry for this competition ;-)

Cheers!
Guest 03-Mar-2004 07:16
The detail caught my eye
Claudio Gatti03-Mar-2004 05:30
Hi John,

good macro with great colors and lots of textures

Claudio
niamh 02-Mar-2004 22:42
John, great pic, but... where's Molly?? :)