Zebra Longwing On Zinnia

[Charles Wesley]

One day this butterfly came out of nowhere and landed on one of my zinnias. I had to document it.
Lucky for me it liked to stay stationary. Used a Gaussian blur on the BG. Hope its not too artsy.

Canon EOS- 1D, EF 100- 400 mm f/4.5- 5.6 IS, Canon 550 EX flash set at very low MP with Omni Bounce diffuser and a tripod.

Enjoy...

PS/CS4
Topaz Adjust
FocalBlade
____________________
Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL

[Julie Kenward]

I think it's lovely, Charles. I think you could also go with a square crop in this case, taking some off the top and bottom. Beautiful angle on the butterfly and nice work in the reds of the zinnia.

[Vida van der Walt]

Love the colour combination in this beautiful image. Would also consider a more square crop.:)

[Mike Moats]

Hey Charlie, I like the blur you added, nice soft feel. I think juat a crop of the top that would put the B-fly in the top third would work better.

[Alfred Forns]

With the Bfly oriented horizontally would try a different crop Do like the rich colors and clean bg !!!

.... would go with some off the flower top and bottom or just square !!!

[Mike Fuhr]

Beautiful butterfly. I wish one like this would visit me! Agree about the crop. Would try from bottom or top. I like the bkgrd leaf at the top so maybe a crop from the bottom?? What aperture did you use?

[Charles Wesley]

Mike,

Thanks for your comments. I used f/8.0. FocalBlade really is my favorite PS plugin. It worked very well on this image. Use it all the time....
________________
Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL

[Mike Fuhr]

Mike,

Thanks for your comments. I used f/8.0. FocalBlade really is my favorite PS plugin. It worked very well on this image. Use it all the time....
________________
Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL

What does that plug in do?

[denise ippolito]

Charles, I want to get FocalBlade. Colors and details are just lovely! The square crop sounds good. You really have an eye for putting together nice color comps.

[Charles Wesley]

Mike & Denise,

Thanks for the comments. FocalBlade is a program to sharpen an image for either an LCD screen or a print. I only do selective sharpening with the program. It will also do soft focus. I found out about it from Luminous Landscapes about 3 years ago.

It's very easy to use IMO and that's what so impressive....
_______________
Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL

[Ed Vatza]

I like everything about this except for the angle. The butterfly looks distorted to me. The right wing longer than the left. Intuitively, I know the reason but visually it looks distorted.

[Anita Bower]

Lovely. My first thought was that you placed the butterfly on the flower. :) Nice angle and color contrasts. I would like to see the butterfly's wing tips stand out a bit more from the BG. Cropping top and bottom would eliminate distracting elements. Very nice light, and I love the details on the red flower.