Skipper at Sunset

[Julie Kenward]

I found several skippers all settled into different leaves on the same plant this evening right as I was leaving the lake. This one was fearless - even when I used my pop up flash and got right up in his face. ;)

Canon 40D, EF 100mm f/2.8
F3.5 @ 1/100th, ISO 400
Handheld, natural light + evaluative flash
Daylight WB, pattern metering
Cleaned up/blurred the BG a bit in CS4; small crop and sharpening

[Joel Eade]

Hi Julie,

I have no experience with macro, don't even own a macro lens, but I like this image......the symmetry of the eyes and antennae is interesting, the light is nice and the BG smooth with really nice colors, I think you did very well with this.

I assume you chose f/3.5 to enhance the head of the insect?

Joel

[Julie Kenward]

Yes, Joel, that was one of the main reasons. The other is that when a small insect such as this skipper is on a plant in the middle of many other plants that have leaves going in every direction it's very hard to separate the insect from it's BG. The BG can very quickly become overpowering...so I shoot between 3.5 and 5.6 in almost all of these "crowded BG" images. That said, you are correct in that I love the big eyes of the skippers - it's what makes them different from other butterflies - and I wanted to showcase them since this one let me get right in his face. I had no other angles to choose from - it was head on or go home. ;)

I always wish for a bit more DOF out of these images - would love to see the back of the body and the back set of legs have a bit more detail personally - but I do very much like these shallow DOF macro images. They make me feel like I am right there with them again.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Jules - like it a lot - the shallow DOF really brings the focus onto the head/eye's.
Could also try focus stacking if he was happy to sit there, might have been a option to increase the dof on the head/eye's antennae even more - Just at thought.
:)