Macro Photo Competition 2013 No 3 : Results

Judges Comment
Just a very beautiful image with nice composition, beautiful colors, impeccable clarity and light superbly mastered a picture as I love them!

Judges Comment
Just a beautiful picture!!! contrasts are great, the whites are perfectly mastered, sharpness on the eye is perfect, sublime picture.
Photographers Comment
First of all thanks so much to the judges for giving my photo the Mark of excellence award and thanks to all who voted for it as well. My name is Amy Wagoner and this photo was taken with my canon t3i the same day I received my macro lens in the mail lucky for me my 2 year old cat Oliver had his eye set on the birds out back :)

Judges Comment
Great image of the blue-ringed octopus, the colors are very well rendered, sharpness is very good, I'm not an expert in underwater macro but I think it must be quite complicated to get a nice picture, so again congratulations.
Photographers Comment
I shot his Blue Ring Octopus in Dumaguette, Philippines on my first dive trip overseas after switching from a point-and-shoot to a DSLR in an underwater housing. It's shot with a Nikon D200 in a Sea & Sea housing with a single strobe. Post processing was all done in Lightroom which other than global corrections was primarily cropping the shot to a vertical orientation. It was an amazing day in that we saw two Blue Ring Octopus, two Mototi Octopus, and two Wonderpus Octopus all on one dive. -Kip Nead

Judges Comment
Congratulations for this photo, it is not technically perfect, but it is very original, it's pretty rare to see so many bees drinking, the composition would have been a little better if you had removed the bee left but it is a very beautiful image nonetheless.
Photographers Comment
I shot this with a D7000 and 105mm Nikon. It was a very hot 40c summer day. I was walking past the Sir Adam Beck statue on University and Richmond St in Toronto, ON. A swarm of maybe 200 bees was busy drinking from the fountain at the statues base. I sprawled onto the fountain started shooting. Setting were. 1/160 at f3.5,iso 500. I didn't want to use a high ISO for a sharper image. F-stop is low but again I had no flash so I couldn't go higher and risk motion blur. Not a tech perfect picture but it does tell a story and I don't see many macros of multiple insects. Just the common one. I have adjusted the crop as suggested.

Judges Comment
A very nice shot, the composition is well done, the colors are beautiful, and the sharpness of the subject is well controlled. Good job.

Judges Comment
Congratulations on this very original photo, the composition is well worked and sharpness on the spider is very good, very good work.
Photographers Comment
Thank you to the judges for selecting my macro spider. Lacking a "true" macro lens, I improvised using a magnifying glass. I liked the result with the enlarged spider and the blurred background. The photo was taken in my back yard in North Florida. I was using a Pentax K5 with a 50MM 1.4 prime lens.
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