Incoming...

Hover fly landing on a 'don't know what it's called' flower in the garden.

[The final shot is on my '[url=http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1301268]Kinda Horrigans[/url]' journal]

This was a bit of a rescue job. I decided to blip it because there's a fair bit of difference between the before and after. In fact, in this before shot, I don't even think you can see the hover fly that well! So, what I did was to open it in Photoshop, then duplicate the background layer. Opened up the lighting effects under Filter > Render and used the omni light to spotlight the hoverfly. Applied the effect then changed the blend mode to 'lighten'. This means that only the areas which need lightening get lightened. The layer was flattened and then I used a new layer set to 50% grey and overlay blend mode with a white brush to dodge the wings and body of the hoverfly just little more subtley. Flattened it, and then I duplicated the background again, applied some sharpening and used a layer mask together with a black brush to make sure that the flowers / bokeh weren't too sharp.

It's still not as sharp as it could be - but I'm a bit pants at shots like these and wasn't using a tripod with my longer lens (which I should've done really!)