Busy ants.

This was another shot that turned out differently than expected.  I was out taking shots with my macro lens, looking for butterflies and more photos for my nature notes.  I hadn’t gone far onto the old railway track when I found some cow parsley and thought I would take some pictures.

I then noticed the ants, and thought they might be interesting to photograph.  Something as small as an ant is quite difficult to photograph in detail and get sharp.  This was the best of the photos.

However, the reason I like this photo is not because of the subject particularly, but because of the overall look of the shot.  It looks as though I have played with it a lot in Lightroom, but other than upping the exposure by a stop and cropping followed by a touch of sharpening, I haven’t done much with it, the effect appeared in-camera, and I do not know how.

The camera settings were ISO200, 1/125secs with f/9.0.  This shouldn’t be enough to blur the background that much, and I don’t remember it being that shade of green.  For once I had my camera on shutter priority (due to the fact I was hunting butterflies), so maybe the light changed too quickly for the camera. Who knows?

From a composition point of view I was a little disappointed at first, it was not easy to crop as there are always bits going out of the frame making it look incomplete, and I couldn’t remove the bottom flower without the main subject being positioned in such a way as to make the picture appear unbalanced.  However, it is growing on me, and I think it works.  As ever, it could probably be improved if it was sharper, but maybe this adds to the effect.