The Eye has it!

Mike B in OKlahoma · Post by **Mike B in OKlahoma** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 5:45 pm

I was fascinated by this fellow's eye. I had to do minor reconstructive surgery to repair an obnoxious flash reflection, but the eye is still pretty cool.

He is at as precisely 2x as I'll ever get, right at the minimum focus distance for my 180mm with a 2x macro.

Brazilian lancehead, Bothrops moojeni
captive subject
2x

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 6:16 pm

Nice clean shot there Mike. No "nosehair" as I can tell.

jmlphoto · Post by **jmlphoto** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 7:54 pm

reptile eyes are amazing. great capture

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 8:18 pm

Wonderful textures in the iris of the eye!

You're giving up a lot of contrast range, though, at least on my display. Photoshop histogram shows essentially nothing below 23 or above 228. Try slapping on a level adjust, say something like (21,1.15,243), and see if you like the result better.

--Rik

Mike B in OKlahoma · Post by **Mike B in OKlahoma** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:08 pm

rjlittlefield wrote:Wonderful textures in the iris of the eye!

You're giving up a lot of contrast range, though, at least on my display. Photoshop histogram shows essentially nothing below 23 or above 228. Try slapping on a level adjust, say something like (21,1.15,243), and see if you like the result better.

Here is a quick version with level adjustment done by eyeball (heh). I'd deliberately used a curve on the first version to brighten up the background (because this is almost all flash-lit, the background is pretty dark in the out-of-camera version). I do like the snake better here. I don't like the background as well as the first, but I don't dislike it as much as I expected. If I gave into temptation, I'd regularly post black-background flash-lit subjects, but I try very hard to not do it unless I have a rather special photo I can't get any other way, or else if the subject is at least arguably a night-active creature. So I didn't even examine this version much (I also used levels on the top end for this version, and that was a good idea).

Thanks for making me think about my photo, rather than just semi-blindly processing in the "standard" way.

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:22 am

Excellent photo mike. I do like the second one better....better contrast for sure. I have Photoshop Elements and I never use it. There is a class coming up at the local High School, will have to look into taking that.