Winged Visitation

[susanschermer]

Of the many captures of a swallowtail visiting the sunflowers alongside the highway in the late PM, I chose this one because of the fuzz on the stem and the sepal. I added color to a grayish dark sky in Viveza.\
Canon 40D, 100mm macro
ISO 400 , f9, 1/320

[Julie Kenward]

Gorgeous, Susan! The sky looks to be a bit purple but I'm on an uncalibrated monitor so it's probably just me. Everything is perfectly in focus and you did a great job on getting a side profile of the BF. I love how the bottom loop of his tail balances out the one sepal that is floating off in the other direction. Nice symmetry!

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Susan,
I like the composition as presented. For my taste, I would give it a tad more room to the right by adding canvas; and desaturating the yellows on the flower only, they are running on the hot side...good show...:cool:

[Robert O'Toole]

Hi susan!

Love this image, even the thumbnail on the section page looked great.

The added blue looks good but I see some noise in the BG. the trick is to run NR before you make big hue, Lumi, sat, or contrast changes. Also some good NR programs let you reduce noise by color.

Robert

Robert

[Mike Moats]

Hey Susan, very cool comp, I like how the B'fly is peeking around the flower. Agree with Robert, that it has a little noise, but I know I've run into this from time to time when I scale for web.

[Anita Rakestraw]

I love the color palette on this, Susan! I see the noise also. Beautiful image overall!