Butterfly sp.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Canon 7D Canon 180mm macro ISO 400 1/80 sec f8

It was just impossible to get that first anther in the shot!
All C&C welcome


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[Steve Maxson]

Hi Jon. You have very nice lighting, a beautiful mix of colors, the butterfly is a very nice specimen, and the clean background is very pleasing. This must be a spectacular flower with those long red stamens! Having said that, those same red stamens are really pulling my eye away from your butterfly - especially the curved one next to its head. The comp suffers from the two stamens that are just touching the frame on the left. One possibility might be to clone the curved stamen and add a bit of canvas on the left. I'll be interested to see what others have to say. :S3:

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Jonathan, very nice combi of a pretty butterfly and a pretty flower. Was this in a butterfly garden? The butterfly was not really helpful with that goofy antler. Steve raises some good points about the stamen. At first I took the curved one for the butterfly's tongue! Taking a bit off the left, like Steve suggests, would help. Cloning out the curved stamen would be a challenge, but doable. I also notice that the edges of the butterfly are quite soft, one or two stops down would have helped (I bet the 7D can handle a bit higher ISO levels). Maybe a little selective sharpening in PS?

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks very much for the feedback, your thoughts were similar to mine but I posted as is just to see what you comments would be. I was wondering if it would be worthwhile or not to put it into a local competition in view of the colourful content. The soft edges are probably due to less than ideal technique, despite a tripod being used I was almost balancing on it, I was on the edge of a bank it was very difficult to try to keep everything still and there was some very smelly water in the ditch and I did not fancy going in there one little bit! The image was not taken in a butterfly garden, it was wild and free.
(If you were wondering - on reflection, no I do not think it is strong enough for competition - local or not!)

[Marina Scarr]

The first thing that stands out to me here is the killer BG!!! This image works quite well although I wish the butterfly were facing the viewer a tad more.