Checkerd White Camper

[Mel Phillips]

I discovered this gal in my front yard while retrieving my morning paper. It was about 7:30AM, late spring last year in east central Florida. I took many pictures over about 15 to 20 minutes while the dew dried. This crop shows about 75% of the original frame. I'm a long time amateur and use PS Elements 4 right now (not very adept yet at PS). All comments welcome.

Canon 20D
100-300mm 1:4.5-5.6 @ 130mm
1/500 @ F10.0
ISO 200
AWB Fine JPEG
No flash, hand held

[Robert O'Toole]

Hi Mel,

Beautiful image. Composition is good. Light is nice, no harsh shadows. Super job of steady handholding!

To improve the image I would remove the small smudge behind the dried bud. Then I would remove the OOF leaves along the upper right hand edge. I would use a mask but since PS Elements doesnt offer that you could clone them out maybe. It would help the image heaps since they are distracting.

Thanks for posting,

Robert

[Matthew Pugh]

Hi
One processing aspect that it might be worth trying is to darken the mid tones a fraction, and I mean a fraction - maybe 3-5 points in levels. I think this would strengthen the brown marking of this little chap, and help give a bit of punch to the image overall
I could be wrong, but perhaps worth a try
And a pretty cool butterfly shot either way
Matthew

[Mike Moats]

Hey Mel, you can't beat a critter shot cover with dew. Nice job on handholding, I can never pull that off. Looks great, as been mentioned just a quick clone on the upper right corner. Well done.

[Mel Phillips]

Thanks for the positive comments. I tried some cloning to remove the OOF distractions and the vertical sprig on the dead twig, then cropped slightly tighter. Also adjusted the saturation and lightened the shadows a bit. Give a look.