Crab-claw monster

[martha36]

This is a macro shot of the tip of the claw of a blue crab. The black spot on it caught my eye, because it made the claw look like some sort of monster or something. My husband hates it, because he says he's not sure what it is. I'm wondering if the background is too distracting, and if the perspective makes it too disembodied and out of context.



I'm sorry but I don't have any info on the shot - I used my Nikon point-and-shoot, which can macro focus and it was in automatic mode.

[kawazu]

Martha, I actually like the spot too. At first I didn't and thought that it really distracted from the great texture of the crab claw, but if you look at it from the perspective of it being a monster's eye (like a dinosaur, t-rex maybe) then it's hard to imagine the shot without it. I'd recommend as far as changes, that the ISO speed of your camera must have been way up because I see lots of noise in the image. Did you sharpen the image in post? If so, maybe a bit too far for my taste. Notably, I'm seeing some "halos" around the "teeth" and a bit of red/green noise on the "throat". I don't think the background is too distracting, but maybe toned down a bit might draw some more attention to the claw. It's abstract if you look at the claw as a dinosaur/monster, and I think being disembodied helps this (if that's what you're going for)