Ants

[GardenersHelper]

I've not been doing much photographic activity for a while, but I'm starting to get back into it and these were captured hand-held several days ago in the grounds of the church opposite our house using a Laowa 2X 100mm macro lens with a pair of 2X Kenko teleconverters on a Sony A7sii, with a Yongnuo YN24EX twin flash firing backwards to reflect off of a 12" plastic bowl lined with a layer of printer paper on top of a layer of aluminium foil, with the reflected light diffused on exit from the bowl with a layer of artificial silk.

The raw files were processed using DXO PhotoLab, Adobe Lightroom and Topaz DeNoise AI, with the first five having a round trip from Lightroom to Photoshop and back to use low opacity cloning to damp down flash reflections on the ants' highly reflective abdomens.

There are 1300 pixel high versions of these images in this album at Flickr.

#1

2032 01 2022_05_21 DSC06029_PLab5-Edit LR 1300h DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#2

2032 02 2022_05_21 DSC06030_PLab5-Edit LR 1300h DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#3

2032 03 2022_05_21 DSC06034_PLab5-Edit LR 1300h DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#4

2032 07 2022_05_21 DSC06050_PLab5-Edit LR 1300h DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#5

2032 06 2022_05_21 DSC06049_PLab5-Edit LR 1300h DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#6

2032 05 2022_05_21 DSC06048_PLab5 LR 1300h DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#7

2032 10 2022_05_21 DSC06087_PLab5 LR 1300h DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#8

2032 14 2022_05_21 DSC06122_PLab5 LR 1300h DNAIc by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

 

[scoober]

These are superb

 

[Cobra]

Excellent Nick