Give me a moment to bring up a couple pics....

Earlier in the Summer, when everything went horribly wrong, and I was completely devastated, I took a bunch of bleak pictures of shattered, dead things, an expression of what I was experiencing... like this:

Here's a somewhat friendlier picture:

very nice. or you could view the white pine as a testament to tenaciousness in the face of some of the harshest conditions? those dead things made the most of hundreds of years!

Here's another shot from the beginning of the Summer, when everything I could see was trapped and dying:

Thanks. The second shot looks that way, more than the first, I think. The first is more dark and harrowing. The second is more of a testament to survival in the harshest of conditions.

i like that one quite a bit. how much post processing do you do on a shot like that? or do you handle everything at the time of the shot?

(processing question was about the second pic; i seem to be posting one picture behind - sorry)

Funny you should ask. Normally, I don;t do much post-processing to my pictures. In the case of the fly being caught and eaten by the roundleaf sundew, that was actually my very first time ever trying focus stacking. Due to the stacked focus, the sundew picture involves more post-processing than most of my pictures.

The second of the three pictures? Almost no post-processing. I spent a minute or so adjusting contrast, white balance, etc., during the conversion stage, and then a minute or two dust spotting, then just resizing it for the web, giving it a slight sharpen as I downsized it, and a simple frame.

ah. now i have to make a note to research focus stacking. makes sense on the second - the contrast and saturation make the photo strikingly rich - wondered if that required adjustments afterward or if that was something that you achieved 'on the spot'.

It's about 98% done in camera at the time the shot is taken, and a small part perfecting it, later, for final display.