The Dark Lord

[Piotr Shpakowski]

Vanesa atlanta,EOS 20D, Sigma 105 2,8 Makro,Bulgaria ,natural light ,no crop.Best regards.

[Piotr Shpakowski]

Correction - little horizontal crop

[Ed Vatza]

I like the concept here, Piotr. But the execution doesn't quite work for me. The dark butterfly (particularly the body) seems to get lost against the dark background. And the butterfly does not look real sharp to me.

[Julie Kenward]

Piotr, if this had been in the OOTB forum, I would have given you a lot more creative freedom but I think Ed is right. The butterfly's body is a bit too dark and unfocused to carry the image. I downloaded your image to see if a shadow/highlight adjustment could save it but its really even too dark for that. Since you didn't leave the specs on aperture and shutter speed I'm not sure what to tell you to do differently but I'd be sure to check the histogram next time to make sure your image is properly exposed.

[Robert O'Toole]

Piotr

I tend to see things differently than most people here so here are my ideas.

I think you intentionally underexposed the image so the backlighting shows off the translucent colors and in this case, it doesnt matter which way the butterfly is facing and it doesnt matter at all that the butterfly is not a middle tone. I like it but I only wish you would have shown more of the full shape of the flower and that the wings were more level.
Its different and I like the idea, keep trying new ideas and expressing yourself with new visions.

Robert

[Chris Starbuck]

Piotr,
Robert got me thinking... You've already gone pretty far to abstract this. Maybe what's needed is to push it even further out of the box. I tried a few quick Photoshop filters (labeled on the attached image). What do you think?
Chris