Tiny Dino

Okay, okay... I'm WELL aware that modern day birds are probably more likely descended from dinosaurs than lizards are, but this little guy looks like he came straight outta Jurassic Park. I love the macro on this. He (or she) was only about 4 or 5 inches long, including his tail. That means his head itself was not even 1 inch.

To accomplish this shot, I mounted my Itorex macro filter onto my Tamron zoom lens. I shot using available sunlight and did the desaturation using Adobe Photoshop 7. It was a blend of several different layers, including 2 seperate B&W layers (one was desaturated according to a red channel... the other according to the green channel), a levels layer, and a simple brightness/contrast layer mask to add a slight vignette around the edge. Minimal manipulation was done other than slight dodging and burning.

This is the first of many wildlife shots that I hope to post from my trip to Florida.