Hackberry Emperor

[Joseph Przybyla]

I photographed this butterfly a while back and just recently revisited it, working on it in post processing. The background is not ideal but the habit of this butterfly is to perch on trees or other objects well off the ground. In this image it was Spanish Moss hanging from a tree branch.

Nikon D7000
Nikon 70-300mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF shot at 300mm (450mm FFE)
1/500 F/8 ISO 250
Post processed in Lightroom 5

[Nancy Bell]

You captured a great widespread wing pose on the butterfly, and it is nicely parallel to the camera making all the details appear equally on both sides. To make the bkgd a little less intrusive you could try using a lower f-stop for less DOF. This is always a compromise between getting maximum details on the butterfly and blurring the bkgd. On the other hand, the Spanish Moss is almost evenly spread throughout the bkgd and almost appears uniform. Plus the pale green color does not compete with the butterfly at all.

[Daniel Cadieux]

The butterfly look sbeautiful, and having held its wings flat open gave you the opportunity to get decent dof coverage on it without stopping down too much. I agree the BG moss is a bit much but that is how this fella likes it eh!