Hi Kerry,
This is an interesting shot and evidence of that's in the fact that the grasshopper is still working hard to get away from its dinner date. As for how close you were able to get; you know how much cropping was needed (or not) but whatever the case the overall composition and angle is perfect.
Now the one thing that's let you down in this photo is the exposure. Looking at it we can see the highlights are blown out, both along the belly of the grasshopper and also on the top of the spider.
From what I can tell you made the photo in manual mode… chances are though, that you forgot to check on the exposure as you made the image.
Although I don't get too hung up on looking at the histogram every time I make a photograph, the one option I do find useful is the Highlight warning. This is usually represented as the flashing areas of a scene when you're reviewing the image on your camera's LCD panel. Most cameras give you the option of turning the option on or off and I strongly recommend keeping it turned on.
You can nearly always recover shadow detail, but you can never recover lost highlight detail.
One other observation with the exposure is that you were using a shutter speed of about 1/60th of a second at 100 ISO. This has been useful in capturing the movement of the grasshopper, but at the same time it's just worth remembering that at these speeds you need to be working on a tripod to avoid getting camera shake. A better option might have been to have sneaked up to 200 ISO and had the advantage of just a little more speed (1/125th).
Now, as for how to improve the image… you can't recover the lost highlights, but as an option you might try playing with the image using Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro as I have in the example below.
Good effort at any rate.
Cheers, Anthony
Image Doctor's edited version
