Frog Crosses Sunrays – The Process

The Situation

I have been thinking about a topic I could blog about. So there was some quick brainstorming and I’ve had some ideas. But writing about color theories is boring and it has been done a million times before.

Hence I came up with the idea of giving you an insight into my personal photography as well as post processing.

My first post is going to deal with the Frog crosses Sunrays photo.

The first things I looked out for were the weather and a great location to perform some macro shoots. Actually I had been waiting around 2 weeks until I was satisfied with the weather.

After arriving at the garden I walked around and looked out for some interesting shots. I wanted to analyze the location first and shoot afterwards. This way I could clearly determine the importance of each shot. There was a great variety of different and also some exotic flowers. But there was also this noise which happened to catch my attention. Usually I tend to listen to music but luckily this time I was not.

So I went around searching for the noise. I was expecting a frog but I was excited at the same time too.

When I was nearly at my subject ,the frogs, I could see another photographer lurking for the perfect picture. Looking at his equipment I saw that he was not some novice geared up with some cheap stuff but rather with a 5D MK II and some 200 mm macro lens. Of course I took the chance to talk to him and exchange some ideas. Photographers tend to be really kind. It’s not the first time that I have been discussing with one. Nevertheless the small talks give you a different insight and some new ideas.

Getting the photo I have uploaded took me approximately 20 minutes even though it was a really small pond. But waiting for the frog to come into a nice position was the main key. Additionally there were some grasses which made it quiet difficult to come close to the frog. Thanks to the Live View I could push the cam into the grasses. I usually prefer the viewfinder but in this case it was just the perfect situation to take some use of the live view.

As you can see in this picture I already considered some segmentation while shooting. Shots with their subjects in the middle are mostly boring thus I try to avoid them. Besides the segmentation I also had to keep an eye on the sunrays. If they would not cross the eyes of the frog the shot would not have turned out this great. The sunrays emphasize the frog in this shot greatly.

The work after the fun

Nowadays there is no photography which does not go through some post processing. Thus the fun begins at this point. Some may underestimate the Post Processing but it is in fact as important as the way you have handled your camera. If you are doing it right you can get out a lot more and emphasize certain aspects of your shots.

This is what the shot looks out of the cam. As you can see it lacks a lot of contrast compared to the finished version.


And this is exactly what has been done in Post Processing. Some simple contrast and highlight shading as well as sharpening it while resizing. I didn’t do much more but these small changes are effective and make the image much more appealing to the viewer. There are no secrets behind those methods at all. Usually I tend to do more but if you are starting out with a great shot you have less to do. Thus you should do a few shots and not leave with only a single one. As I have written before – it took me 20 minutes to get this shot. Well spend time in my opinion !

Have a great weekend.