Playing with macro frogs!

I was visiting Christine's Arts blog the other day and came across a drawing of two tree frogs she had done. Check them out at: http://christinesarts.blogspot.com/2009/07/red-eyed-leaf-frog.html I love Christine's art work, she puts so much work in to her pieces showing the various stages on her blog along the way. While you are visiting have a look at some of her other work too, the Calla Lily painting is especially beautiful.

Seeing these frogs of Christine's got me thinking. My wife collects frog ornaments, so we have lots of frog figurines around the house to practice my macro photography on.

The frog I chose first is a tiny little silver frog. Its only just over 2cm long so getting an interesting shot was going to prove tricky.

After photographing it on a ruler to show you its scale, I placed it on a green blanket, to give it a pleasing and textured background.

Although the shot above is ok I personally think it's a little boring. The natural light has bounced off the green of the blanket and highlighted the little silver frog green. Well aren't frogs meant to be green? 

I think the problem with the picture is there is just too much in focus.

So, I changed the camera's aperture from f29 used for the above shot to f4.0 for the shot below. As I was shooting in Aperture priority mode with my camera the shutter speed also changed from 6 seconds to 1/2 second. 

This I think has created a much more dramatic shot with the head still in focus but the body thrown into relief with the light playing over its surface.

Which do you prefer and why? Or it may even be that you don't like either? Let me know via the comments section what you think.