What do you want to emphasize in a photograph that you display to others? It is a creative choice that each of us faces every time we take a photo or manipulate an image.
I enjoy shooting subjects with friends and comparing our results. Earlier in the week I was with Cindy Dyer, my photography mentor, and spotted an interesting looking little beetle on a plant in her garden. I did not have my macro lens on my camera and suggested that she photograph the little striped beetle, a type she had never previously encountered. She later identified the beetle as a Striped Cucumber beetle (Acalymma vittata).
Cindy took a wonderful photo of the beetle staring over the edge of a leaf and entitled her posting “The Abyss.” Her photo is graphic and colorful and full of a sense of mystery and contemplation. I took some photos this evening of what is possibly the same beetle. I tried to convey the same impression that Cindy did in my second photo below, but that was not really what I wanted to stress. This first photo shows my “take” on the subject.
I decided that I wanted to contrast the beauty of the beetle with its destructiveness and chose to include the damaged leaf in the initial photo that is most prominently featured on the blog. The rest of the photos are variations of the themes of beauty and destruction, sometimes depicting only one of the two themes or juxtaposing them both in a single frame.
Our choices influence how our viewers are likely to react to our photos. It is liberating to have that kind of creative freedom. It is who we are and what we do.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
I do mostly flowers and try to let the flower’s beauty speak for itself. I’d rather have the reader focus on nature and hopefully become curious enough to explore it on their own rather than have them focus on the photography aspect, but I suppose they do nonetheless.
I agree with you, but only up to a certain point. Nature’s beauty doesn’t reveal itself in many cases until you find a way to portray it. For example, you can choose to showcase the beauty of a field of flowers or the beauty of a single flower or even the beauty of a single petal or a single stamen. The beauty is already there but you focus attention on it though techniques of focus, depth of field, composition, etc.
True enough. Quite often I miss an amazing amount of detail until I see the photo. And if it wasn’t for photography I couldn’t post the pictures that are hopefully getting people interested in nature. I suppose I should call myself a nature lover first and photographer second. Your photos, by the way, are excellent!