Prepared Or Not, Get The Shot

"OH no!" I thought when I saw this. I had contemplated bringing my telephoto but chose not to because of the weight. I was faced with a choice, go home and mope or use what I had and work out the rest later. The longest lens I had was my 100 macro so I put it on. Hey, better than nothing, right? We were lucky he had just started and the thing he was taking off was pretty stubborn so we had lots of time. I shot as I walked along getting as close as I could. Dar was smart and brought her telephoto so she was able to get in close without moving around too much. I still had to crop a lot to bring him in and this was as close as I dared.

 The lens was the 100 macro 1/320th sec f2.8 iso 200.  The photo was shot here. 


I did a fair amount of processing. First, as I said, the photo is heavily cropped. I love the sparks so I made 2 layers. I desaturated the top layer draining the colour right out. I over saturated the bottom layer to make the sparks brighter. Then I did a lot of selective masking to bring the brighter sparks through. It was picky work but fun and I think worth what I got.