Otange Sulphur on a Zinnia

[Ken Childs]

Canon EOS REBEL T1i
Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS @ 220mm
Av mode
1/800"
F5.6
ISO:200
LR & CS3

[Mike Moats]

Hey Ken, I thought from the thumb nail I would really like this one, but the full version doesn't work for me. I think the blurred flower being larger then the flower the subjects is on pulls my eye to it because of the large size. One other thing would be to clone the little black and orange spots on the of the blurred flower. Clean up some of the white areas at the bottom of the frame. Awesome work on the b-fly and the perch. Great details and beautiful colors. Good BG.

[Julie Brown]

Ken, the color here is just gorgeous! Great focus and BG. I agree with Mike that the pink flower is taking attention away from your subject.

[Allen Sparks]

Great tones and detail on the butterfly. I sometimes find these difficult to expose correctly and this one is great. I'm also not a big fan of the blurred flower...maybe if it was in the background instead of foreground but not sure if that would work either.

[Paul Lagasi]

Nice work with the butterfly and flower, killer colors and DOF..ditto on the out of focus flower..

[Don Lacy]

Hi Ken, I had the same thought as Mike I really wanted to like it but when seeing the full image the OOF flower did not work for me for the same reasons Mike mentions.

[Julie Kenward]

Beautiful colors and I really like the composition but, yes, the pink flower is grabbing my attention as well. Maybe a slight dilution of color there would lead my eye back? If not, crop it and take the flower/butterfly as is because that is absolutely gorgeous. Beautiful backlighting on the butterfly and very nice DOF.

[Ken Childs]

Thanks everyone for the comments.

I'm not at all surprised that the larger flower in the BG received negative comments. Normally I would have kept only the flower that the 'fly was on and done a vertical comp but I thought I'd try something different and see what the response was. There have been times when I posted something here or in other places that I thought was good but received more negative comments than expected and times when I posted something that I thought was so-so and received raving reviews.

Jules I just tried desaturating the pink flower but it's just too big to keep it from being distracting so it has to go!

[OvidiuCavasdan]

Great colors and BG, BF looks very good. Agree about the oof flower. I think that a few more oof flowers would have been interesting.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Ken,
Well....I agree about the "other" flower........but Ovidiu has made an interesting comment above which should serve as some food for thought for all of us! More flowers!......very interesting idea and worth exploring. As presented.....vert crop.....a little cleanup and viola! .....another winner!

[Ken Childs]

........but Ovidiu has made an interesting comment above which should serve as some food for thought for all of us! More flowers!......very interesting idea and worth exploring. !
It's funny you guys should say that because that's what I was hoping to get when I saw this bfly in my Zinnia patch. I literally have a boatload of Zinnias but this bfly wasn't cooperating and didn't land where I wanted it to. If it had landed near near the bow I could have had a flowery multicolor BG but it chose to feed on the starboard flowers near the stern. :)

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Great colours and I find the sulphurs move fast. I actually don't mind the other flower because it seems to balance the image.

[Vida van der Walt]

Lovely colours, soft light and bg Ken. I think your normal work flow of a portrait format would work best.:)