Butterfly on Daisy.

[Daniel Cadieux]

This Northern Crescent Butterfly was fluttering from flower to flower and difficult to approach, but when it rested on this daisy it gave the perfect opportunity to move in. I was able to place myself directly above it, and it even gave me time to slowly move to get better juxtaposition between the two daisies. I was really hoping for the butterfly to spread its wings completely open for better sharpness at the wing tips, and although it seems I had the room to stop down it was rather windy so I put all the SS on my side to freeze the potentially swaying of the flower.

Canon 7D + 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/2000s., f/5.6, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, FF, darkened the lower part of the BG, removed two small spots on a petal.

[Warren Spreng]

Nice Daniel, the colors are beautiful. Darn those butterflies never hold their wings in quite the right positions for us to capture them! :) I sometimes wonder what I look like to the neighbors as I run from flower pot to flower pot waiting for these things to take a short rest!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely exposure and colours Dan, I like the composition too bad you didn't have sufficient DOF, didn't you take any at 1/1250 and 1/1600 sec? - Sorry if this seems wise after the event but I would have certainly tried.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

The comp is great, the back flower looks like an egg ready for breakfast. DOF is the challenge here as often with macro. Fully appreciate the balance of fighting movement and need for high shutter speed, vs. smaller aperture for better dof.

I might fiddle a bit with the relative brightness of the back flower vs. the butterfly. That yellow is so bold, it draws my eye immediately.

Cheers

Randy

[Diane Miller]

A gorgeous composition! I don't mind the shallow DOF. A full wing spread is always nice but we all know how hard it is to get them to cooperate.

[OvidiuCavasdan]

I like the composition and colors. The BF stands out well and I like the oof flower and greens on top left!