John K
Forum Pro
The upper antenna is a problem, but the eye would have been out of focus so no need to get it in the frame. She was trying her best to get away from me -lucky to walk away with anything to post form that session. Very hyperactive.You act like you are the sole arbiter of good composition, but ironically you do the same thing you accuse the focus stacking community of. The only difference is that instead of focus stacking you use high magnification as a crutch, and your compositions often suffer for it.
The shot you posted earlier in this thread is a perfect example:
This is a badly composed shot with the right eye and the corner of the antenna cut of for no good reason. If you just rotated the camera a little to get those in the shot it would have been much better.
Agreed -when I posted that frame to my Flickr gallery I mentioned the same thing.This shot from your gallery is another great example:
This was almost a beautiful shot, but the my eye is drawn straight to the cut off wings. If the bee was a bit lower in the frame it would be a winner, but with the wings cut off like that, I personally would have deleted it. I know you are proudly anti-cropping, but if you had shot this a bit looser you could have cropped back to a perfect shot.
Excellent shot!Why would it make me feel insecure? I don't stack any of my images. Much like yourself I prefer well composed single shots of live subjects. Here are a couple of examples from my gallery:There are some people who focus stack and their composition and lighting is on point, but they are the exception and not the rule.
I've been shooting macro for 14 year and I can say with confidence that the quality of the macro images I see posted on forums like this one haven't really changed in all that time. Razor sharp, poorly lit, and poorly composed is about 90% of what I see on forums. Get on FaceBook or Instagram if you want to see some really good focus stacked images.
For me personally I have little interest in focus stacking because I can get the depth and sharpness that I'm looking for without it, and not stacking frees me up to shoot a wide variety of subjects in a wide variety of conditions. The only thing that stops me from shooting is rain.
My whole point with this thread is that you do not have to focus stack to shoot macro, and that's true. Does that make you feel insecure?
As a bonus, I took this one today as a tribute to you. ;-) Classic John K subject matter, but compared to your shot above, I think the composition is more pleasing due to there being no important parts of the bee cut off.
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Also known as Dalantech
My Book: http://nocroppingzone.blogspot.com/2010/01/extreme-macro-art-of-patience.html
My Blog: http://www.extrememacro.com
My gallery: http://www.johnkimbler.com
Macro Tutorials: http://dalantech.deviantart.com/gallery/4122501/Tutorials
Always minimal post processing and no cropping -unless you count the viewfinder...
