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Tonight I’m exercising a little macro mojo. I don’t know what they are but they sure look strange to me. Straight photo with my 105mm macro lens and Nikon D90 processed in Aperture 3.
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The past Saturday I joined 25 other Louisville photographers for a photowalk with Jon Eland who was visiting Louisville for IdeaFestival. Jon is from Leeds, England which is a sister city with Louisville. As a rule I am not a group shooter, I prefer to go out alone when I do my photography, but after attending a lecture that Jon gave to the PhotoForum camera club here in Louisville last Wednesday I decided to join the group for Jon’s NuLu Fest photowalk. I’m glad I did because the interaction with other photographers led me to some interesting subject matter that I probably wouldn’t have seen such as these insects on the corner of a building on Market Street in the NuLu district of Louisville.
Deborah Brownstein, one of Louisville’s finest macro photographers, pointed these insects out to me as I was walking past Joe Ley Antiques. I was focused on the vast amount of stuff that was outside his shop and walked right past these guys. Deb showed me these insects and immediately I knew that I had to capture a few images of them. I liked the contrast of their red bodies on the green wall and the pattern that they made. I have no idea what they are but I am fascinated by the various stages of growth they appear to be in. Judging by the wings some have matured into full size while other smaller ones are just starting to grow their wings.
Yesterday I decided to start editing the images from the photowalk and the first one I went to was this image. I decided to use Topaz Adjust to enhance the color and detail in the shot. I used to use Topaz Adjust a lot but had drifted away in favor of the NIK collection of software. I decided to use Topaz Adjust 5 and the “Spicify” preset as my point of departure and tweaked several sliders in it to finish this image. I like the controls in Topaz Adjust when I’m editing because they allow me to complete my edit without returning the image to Aperture 3 for sharpening and final output. Everything I need is inside TopazAdjust including sharpening which is something I generally have to return images to Aperture 3 for when using the NIK software.
