Passioflower Butterfly

[Steve Maxson]

I photographed this Passionflower Butterfly (Heliconius hecale zukika) at the Green Hills Butterfly Farm in Belize. We had permission to use tripods and were fortunate to have overcast conditions with no wind. 1D 4, 100 mm macro, 1/10, f/4.5, ISO 400, live view manual focus on the eyes, tripod, mirror lock, cable release, natural light. I toned down the brighter areas of the background and ran nr on the background. This is a fairly heavy crop which is why f/4.5 provide enough DOF. All comments are welcome and appreciated.

[Diane Miller]

Great job of getting things in the plane of focus and being still -- macro isn't easy. I really like the bold colors and contrast. If it were mine, I'd take some off the top to put more emphasis on the beautiful subject.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Steve, this is a wonderful specimen. Colors are indeed great. I agree with a crop from the top. Furthermore, I'd be inclined to apply a little CCW rotation to level the wings a bit. The tops of the antennae look a little hot. Are they this white without the black segment lines, or have the lines disappeared because of the brightness?

[Jonathan Ashton]

Steve, this is a very strong image and I like it as presented, I have a couple of observations you may wish to consider.
It may be worth trying to recrop to put the butterfly on the diagonal as opposed to pretty well horizontal, (maybe possible to include the leaf tip??) I think this will increase impact a little bit.
Secondly the butterfly is in good focus but I wonder if a tad more sharpening would not go amiss.
Thirdly I would be tempted to desaturate the greens

[Steve Maxson]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions! I prepared a repost (included here) based on Diane and Jerry's comments (before I saw Jon's). So I prepared a second repost based on Jon's comments (see post below). One thing this points out is that cropping and comp are subjective and there is often more than one way to present an image.
In this repost I cropped a little off the top, rotated to line up the wings horizontally, and toned down the tips of the antennas which were overly bright. Jerry: in this species the black segment lines on the antennas tend to fade out as you get closer to the tips. :S3:

[Steve Maxson]

This repost is based on Jon's comments. Here I rotated the image to place the butterfly on a diagonal and desaturated the greens a bit. The leaf extended to a long, narrow tip so it didn't work to include that in the frame. Again, I toned down the tips of the antennas.

Which version do you like better? Opinions?

[Jonathan Ashton]

I prefer the second repost, the OOF areas are of much less significance to my eyes, I think the butterfly is for want of a better word a little more dynamic when presented diagonally.

[vishaljadhav]

Steve the OP was really a strong one, however the diagonal placement has taken it over the top ,

The butterfly is so beautifully captured that it was always a strong thing in the image, the placement is something i guess if you would not have presented the second repost i would never would have got it, but once you presented it , feels just the perfect way to present it.
Love the image a lot