Meal Time at Dow Gardens

[Stuart Frohm]

Pentax K100D, SMC Pentax 100 mm Macro 1:4 with Promaster Spectrum 7 Auto Tele Converter MC7 2X for KPR, 1/250, ISO 400, handheld, no flash. Aperture not recorded — probably about f8 or f11. Some processing in iPhoto. Downsized in Elements for posting.

This is one of hundreds of my exposures in the conservatory at Dow Gardens in Midland, Michigan, during this year's edition of an annual exhibit of butterflies, quail, flowering plants and a sizable frog which has been a cooperative poser. (Dow Gardens permits use of tripods and monopods in the exhibit. However, tripods are best used after 2 p.m. on weekdays, when school groups are less likely to be present.)

For details on the exhibit's hours, see the Butterflies in Bloom section here: http://www.dowgardens.org/

Dow Gardens is very near Whiting Forest, which offers additional photo opportunities.

[Randy Stout]

Stuart:

Thanks for sharing the Zebra Mosaic. I like these guys and tree nymphs a lot.
Always a challenge to balance the lighting in these environments, esp. when you often can move around the subject as you would like.

I might try to bring up the brightness of the butterfly a bit, while toning down some of the brighter spots in the background. The brown foreground object RLC is a bit distracting.

Wish he was a bit more to the left of the frame, not so tight on the right. Looks like the DOF plane wasn't quite parallel to the wings, as the fore wing is going out of focus.

Please post some more from Dow, esp. if you have just a wide shot, to show off the layout a bit?

Cheers

Randy

[Julie Kenward]

I think Randy did a pretty nice job on the critique. It's not a bad image - but there are some pretty serious flaws that keep it from being great. The FG is very distracting with the two OOF areas on both sides of the frame. You have the butterfly facing away from you which means little to no eye contact - so the wings need to be enough to hold our interest and here they fall out of the focal plane. If you have any other images I'd love to see them - I'm not sure I've ever seen this species of butterfly before so that is quite a treat!

[Ken Childs]

Randy and Jules covered it pretty well so I really don't have anything to add except that for some reason I'm craving some kiwifruit. :)

[Mike Moats]

Hey Stu, cool subject, and the critiques are right on. Glad to see you made it to Dow Gardens to shoot, see you this week-end.