Post your best Macro shots

[ddt0725]

Really awesome shots on this page! Joel, you are really good with using the textures using your PS magic! I like the one you chose alot!
@Lisa - Love the bleeding hearts shot! I wish my hearts would have cooperated more and all faced front but it was way to windy!

[Joel Eade]

Some backyard bugs.

Took these hand held with Canon 180mm f/3.5 macro.

(The Lady Bug was on a table cloth on our deck and I think it is deceased)

[saslls]

Wow Joel! Those are amazing!! The details are stunning! My favorite is the creepy spider!! The colors in the web are too cool and all the hair on it's legs...creepy!! ( in a good kind of way)

[Jayson]

Joel, great looking spider! Is that a baby garden spider? Damsel fly looks pretty cool also!

Captured a damsel myself. I only had natural light on this guy as I had the the 300mm with tc. I had to crop, but turned out ok for my liking.

[ddt0725]

Awesome shots, Jayson! Very sharp, nice detail and the lighting is perfect!

[Joel Eade]

Thanks Lisa and Jayson, I appreciate the nice comments.

Jayson, I don't know what kind of spider it is. I am new to the world of macro photography so I am not very knowledgeable about insect and spider identification.

BTW, the Damsel fly was natural light, the other 3 were with a single 430 EXII flash on a Wimberly flash extension bracket.

[Joel Eade]

Image of a rose treated with Pixel Bender and Topaz Adjust filters

[Jayson]

Lovely roses Joel. I am not sure of the technical name, but I thought it looked like a baby garden spider. They grow up to be very large with Yellow stuff on their abdomen. Something like this.

[Jayson]

I finally had a chance to do some macro photography the last couple of days and getting some things processed. Here is a fly from today. This image was natural light since it was cloudy all day. Stacked from 9 photos. I have done it a couple times now, but figured out a better process and it really works well. I used CS5 and moved the files to photoshop as layers via bridge from the tools menu. Then I used auto-align layers from the edit menu to get the fly lined up since not all of the photos were perfectly centered. Next used the auto-blend function from the edit menu and cropped the resulting photo. Worked much easier than my last process. I shoot most of my macro shots handheld and this is going to be my new process as it worked so flawlessly on the three pictures I processed this evening. Each had more than 5, but less than 10, images.

Here is the resulting shot followed by the others.

[Jayson]

Here are the other two photos I stacked tonight. First one was 9 images and not cropped. Second one was 5.