Finally I used the Inpainting Brush Tool to remove a distracting fern from the left side of the photo and a gentle High Pass Filter to bring up the sharpness.” I’ve used Levels, HSL (for the background), Brightness/Contrast and another Levels layer for the spider to bring out the details.
I really don’t do too much post processing on my nature photos as I want the colours to remain true to life. The focus stacking and post processing was all done in Affinity Photo. It is a focus stack of three images shot in burst mode. This photo was taken at f/7.1, 1/160, ISO 125 with diffused flash. “My gear for macro photography is: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens. All my spider photos are shot on location without disturbing the spiders, so it is actually rare to get a photo of a male in full display mode like this,” Paul reveals. I’d found a female and just had to wait for a male to make his move (whilst trying to ignore the clouds of mosquitoes that were buzzing around me). The males do this dance display to attract the attention of a female. They are small: Around 4 - 5mm long, so they can be hard to find and they are jumping spiders, so they tend not to sit still for very long. “This particular species of Peacock spider is found in the Lake Muir area of WA and was first described by Otto & Hill in 2017. We love the character and energy captured in this stunning shot of a Maratus electricus by photographer Paul Harrison ( on Instagram). Then as a finishing touch I used the Fine Bandpass Sharpening from James Ritson’s Macro preset.” Paul Harrison I cropped and used the Patch Tool for two tiny corners that went out of frame while changing the angle. Once I was satisfied with the stack work, I adjusted Levels, HSL Shift and Vibrance to make the colours pop a little more. While editing, I noticed two layers that weren’t in focus, and for that I used a combination of the Patch Tool, the Inpainting Brush Tool, the Blemish Removal Tool and again the Clone Brush Tool. It needed some brushing up and for that I used the Clone Brush Tool. Since I only shoot live insects in the field with a manual lens and no macrorail, the shots don’t always align perfectly. “In Affinity Photo I used Focus Merge to stack the 20 shots. I was able to get 20 shots of this colourful weevil,” Marit reveals. I’m always at the mercy of the whims of insects I’m photographing, so when it decided to pause for a bit and sit very still, I had to move fast. I held the petal of the tulip some 30 centimetres from the forget-me-nots to create this shade of blue. The blue you see in the background is from lovely out of focus forget-me-nots. “This is a green immigrant leaf weevil (Polydrusus formosus) sitting on the petal of a yellow tulip.
The vibrant colours in this stunning shot captured by Marit van Ekelenburg ( on Instagram) immediately caught our attention.
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