Monarch On The Way 2

[Charles Wesley]

My Monarch chrysalis is now eight days old. When I first looked at it with my naked eyes, I thought something was dreadfully wrong. After looking through my lens, I felt much better. Used an old cloth BG on this image. Need to clean it for sure. Please note this series was taken under a very controlled environment.

Canon EOS-5D Mk ll camera, Sigma 180 mm. f/3.5 APO HSM DG macro lens, Canon 1.4 TC, Canon 25 mm. ET, Canon 12 mm. ET, Canon 550 EX flash on MP and my Bogen tripod. My exposure was 13 secs. @ f/32.0 1600 ISO Live Camera Mode.

Canon D.P.P.
PS/CS 4
Topaz Denoise 4
Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0
FocalBlade
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Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL

[Anita Bower]

How exciting! Can the chrysalis be lightened a bit?

[Charles Wesley]

Anita,

It was incredibly black. I used my flash eventhough I prefer natural light and PP to lighten it. This is as far as I could go. Think mother nature has the chrysalis become necrotic at this stage...
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Charlie Wesley
St Augustine Beach, FL

[Daniel Cadieux]

Very cool. I bet you can't wait for it to start emerging!! There is faint blotching on the BG that may be worth smoothing out.

[Charles Wesley]

Daniel,

I agree with you on the blue BG. That's why I said in my posting that I wished I had cleaned the cloth. Had very little luck cleaning up the blotches in PS. Seemed to migrate around. Hope someone has a hint for me.

Very frustrating...
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Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL
http://naturesphotographs.com

[Steve Maxson]

It looks like the butterfly is fully formed in the chrysalis and ready to pop out at any moment, Charles. I hope you are there when it happens. I like the blue background (green would also work well here). After looking at your specs, I'm curious why you chose to use a macro lens plus a teleconverter and 2 extension tubes for this larger-than-lifesize shot. Wouldn't the macro lens alone accomplish this?

[Ken Childs]

I don't mind the dark chrysalis. There's just enough color showing through to keep it interesting. I think I'd prefer a tighter crop. It seems that there is just too much open space for my tastes.


Had very little luck cleaning up the blotches in PS. Seemed to migrate around. Hope someone has a hint for me.
I used a heavy dose of Neat Image NR and that got rid of some of the blotching. Blurring got rid of more and painting over with a soft brush at a low opacity and color selected from the BG finished it off.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Charles,
Yep.....they get that dark right before they pop out! I like the curve and VG advice from Ken above on smoothing out the BG. I do want to talk to you about the flash.....becuase in another post you mentioned how windy it is where you live......if you don't like the flashed look.....you only need to use it as fill but it will greatly help you in windy conditions. Keeping it off camera or to the side is usually best. Reflectors will also help greatly....usually getting you almost a stop. Don't have one.....aluminum foil taped on some matboard. Flash is the only surefire way to help in wind.....so dial it down and use it only as fill...will open up more days for you to go out and photogrpah macro!

[Charles Wesley]

Ken & Roman,

Thanks for the advise on the BG splotches. I just washed my cloth BG. Roman, I used my 550 EX flash HH set to MP. Used it at 1/64 to 1/128 power to fill in the dark areas of the chyrsalis. Have PhotoFlex reflectors. Need to break them out more.

Thanks so much for the help...
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Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL
http://naturesphotographs.com

[Charles Wesley]

Steve,

I used my 12 & 25 mm. ET's and 1.4 TC to get in closer and eliminate as many leaves on the host plant. It's one of my corn plants. There are leaves hanging everywhere. Did not want to cut any. Actually used dental floss to tie them back.
__________________________
Charlie Wesley
St Augustine Beach, FL
http://naturesphotographs.com

[Steve Maxson]

Thanks for the followup, Charles.
Steve,

I used my 12 & 25 mm. ET's and 1.4 TC to get in closer and eliminate as many leaves on the host plant. It's one of my corn plants. There are leaves hanging everywhere. Did not want to cut any. Actually used dental floss to tie them back.
__________________________
Charlie Wesley
St Augustine Beach, FL
http://naturesphotographs.com

[Julie Kenward]

Charlie, use the brush technique! Select the chrysalis and the green stem and then inverst the selection. Now use the eye dropper to select a 3x3 sample of the blue BG. Grab the brush tool, select a soft, large brush, and paint right over all the blue. Because the blue is the only part selected, the stem and chrysalis won't be touched so paint away with wild abandon!

Normally, I'd suggest using a 30% opacity on the blue but since this is a relatively flat surface, go for 100% and don't worry about it.

Finally, I opened a levels adjustment and scooted the high tones to the 240 mark and the middle tones to 1.05. Not sure if that's really "better" but it did let in a bit more light. See what you think...

[Charles Wesley]

Jules,

Great PS work. I see an improvement on the image. Will try to replicate. Thanks so much. The chrysalis is clearing. Will photograph tomorrow. Wish I had some time off from work on Thursday & Friday. Afraid the " big " guy will break out
when I'm not home...
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Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL
http://naturesphotographs.com

[Jonathan Ashton]

very nice shot, I have not seen one before