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View Full Version : Wood White (Leptidea sinapsis)



Julie Brown
02-04-2010, 09:25 PM
I think I have the correct species ID:) Photographed July 2009, in a field in the town of Uriage Le Bains, near Grenoble, France.

Canon 40D, 300mm f4L IS, ISO 200, f5.6, 1/500sec, manual mode, 0EV, pattern metering,HH, sun/clouds
PP: LR 2.6
more than 50% crop to isolate butterfly and flower
Exposure: set black and white points
add fill light, enhance clarity and vibrance
tweak tone curve: brought highlights and lights down
sharpening, NR
cloned out part of flower in URC, smoothed out BG
adjustment brush: selective sharpening on OOF front of flower, butterfly body, wings, stem

Jonathan Ashton
02-05-2010, 02:36 AM
Yes it looks like a wood white to me, I don't know if you saw it fly but they have a very soft gentle flight pattern?
I like the image very much, given the data I would have gone for a smaller aperture this would have permitted focus of the upper wing. Do you use a tripod? I have tried hand held with flash for years then I used a monopod now I use a tripod and use the flash less but when I do it is sparingly.

Julie Brown
02-05-2010, 05:57 AM
Jonathan, thanks for the comment. I spent about 2 euphoric hours in that field chasing butterflies, but can't remember if I saw it fly. I don't like the OOF part of the wing either. I chose the shallow depth of field to blur the BG. When I first started shooting butterflies (I used a Tamron 28-300) I didn't really know what I was doing and got mixed results. Then I went to a NABA meeting and a guy from England told me to shoot at f/16, 1/250, with the pop-up flash ( I think he had a film camera). My images got sharper, but the BG was often very busy or really dark. I also tried using a tripod, but it is hard to do that in a group of butterfliers with their close-focusing binoculars. You can't get your shot until they have all gotten a look.

Anita Bower
02-05-2010, 08:07 AM
Lovely. The BG is gorgeous. I don't know how to balance sharp butterfly and blurred BG orther than experiementing with different apertures. Nice details in the head area. Is that a little curlicue from the butterfly?

Julie Brown
02-05-2010, 10:59 AM
Thanks Anita. I am happy with the BG so I chose the correct aperture for that. The challenge when using a shallow DOF is getting all of the butterfly in the same plane, especially when they are active. I focus on the eye first and keep shooting as I move in for a better position. The curlicue is the proboscis as the butterfly has begun to uncurl it to nectar.

Jerry van Dijk
02-05-2010, 03:39 PM
Hi Julie, wonderful butterfly and I love that flower! Too bad about the wing. I think I would have accepted a busier background in favour of it. Have you considered cropping this as a horizontal? I think it would work wonderful on this image.

Jerry van Dijk
02-05-2010, 03:53 PM
Hi Julie, I've been playing around with your image and came up with this composition. I cropped it as a horizontal, getting rid of much empty space on top and below. I also added a little canvas (in a sloppy way as you can tell) to the left and right to create a little more room around your subjects and to put the flower at about a third of the frame. Hope you don't mind me fiddling with your image.

Julie Kenward
02-05-2010, 07:48 PM
Jerry had the same idea that I did - although I do like the vertical crop you presented. The original post gives more of a "meadow" feel and the tighter repost gives the bf more focus.

I think you used good judgment on the camera settings because a busy BG would have ruined this but you might try 6.3 (one jump up) and make sure you get them at a 90 degree angle to the focal plane of the camera - THAT tends to get those wings in a better position. It's not always about the camera settings but about how you angle the camera to the butterfly that will get you a winning combination.

So far, this is one of my favorites of yours. That tongue is fantastic! I only wish it had a little more room between it and the antenna. Lovely!

Mike Moats
02-05-2010, 08:07 PM
Hey Julie, great looking image. Nice work on the whites, love the comp, Jerry's cropped version looks excellent also. Good details and great BG.

Julie Brown
02-05-2010, 08:39 PM
Thanks Jerry, Jules, and Mike for the helpful comments. :) I chose the vertical crop for the first post because I liked the curve of the stem and the BG colors. Jules, I will put your recommendation regarding aperture and focal plane to use as soon as spring comes!

As it turns out, when I first worked on this series of shots in LR I went for the horizontal crop. My original crop is shown here in the very next image I shot. The wing is a bit sharper, but the proboscis not as interesting. There also seems to be more noise in the upper BG.

Allen Sparks
02-08-2010, 03:26 PM
wow - nice. love the whites and that probiscus. Like both crops. I'm still trying to figure out the blurry background vs sharp wingtip myself so can't offer much there other than right now I am opting for the narrower aperture and trying to correct busy backgrounds in post processing.

Julie Brown
02-08-2010, 05:17 PM
Thanks Allen. I have gone back and forth on the aperture settings. When I started shooting more wide open to get a blurry background I didn't know how to smooth it out in PP. Next time I am going to take it down a stop or 2.