Fredrico the Fly

Original:  A typical photography excursion - I go out armed with my sweet iPhone4S, take hundreds of pictures of whatever seems remotely interesting, and come home with a phone that is hot to the touch and barely has any battery power left.  Above is a typical picture - while taking countless pictures of flowers with my macro Olloclip lens, I stop at the basketball court on the way home and spy a tiny little fly.  Naturally this captures my attention because I want to see how small of an object I can capture with my sweet macro Olloclip.  Unfortunately for this fly, he was not having a very good day.  How sad.  Anyhow, he was not wanting to fly, and seemed to be, um, having issues.  That's okay for me though - he was still long enough for me to take about 2 dozen pictures.  Why so many?  Good question - when shooting with a macro lens it is almost impossible to tell if you are taking a good picture at the time, so take lots of pictures to make good use of your time.  My rule of thumb is: Always take several pictures and hope one turns out the most perfect.  Not perfect, just "the most" perfect. 

Final Masterpiece:  Wow, this looks pretty cool!  This is what a tiny little fly looks like on a concrete basketball court as the sun sets.  As you can see, I needed to jazz up the picture quite a bit to get the desired results.  That's okay - I have 10 minutes to spare, my iPad, and some really cool apps.  First, I cropped the pic so that the fly was as big as possible.  Next, I sharpened the picture, but not so much that it developed that goofy "over-sharp" look.  Then I tweaked the Brightness, Ambience, Saturation, Contrast, and added a little more Sharpness.  After that it was time to run it through the Noise Reduction cycle.  This is actually a real challenge, as too much washes out all the nice detail, and not enough makes it too grainy.  But the finished results look pretty cool - a nice iridescent shimmer on the wings, and all the delicate features and hairs are accentuated on my little fly friend.

***Editor's Note:  I am so sad - my little fly friend passed away.  :-(  Did you know that flies typically only live up to 14 days?  I think I may have taken this picture on day 13-3/4.
RIP Fredrico the fly.