Giant Swallowtail

[Leon Robinson Jr.]

My first post in this forum. It's a little soft and busy but it's an infrequent visitor to my yard. It's feeding on one of my favorite nectar plants; Mexican Sunflower and the picture depicts how the plant looks when continuously blooming. COMMENTS WELCOMED!

Canon 7D - 300 mm + 25 Tube - 1/400 - f4.0 - ISO 320 - Slight Crop - Mid Day

http://i420.photobucket.com/albums/pp281/Leon_2008Photos/IMG_5344-1.jpg

[Patrick Sparkman]

Nice subject. Often these guys have pretty worn wings, but this one is nice. Also like the flower. As you said the background is busy. Could you have gotten lower and to the right to get a better background. That stalk down the right side of the frame takes attention away from the butterfly.

Best

Patrick

[Ken Childs]

Hi Leon, a big welcome to BPN!

The light on this looks good and and other than the upper areas of the wing, the butterfly looks pretty sharp. You've already done a good self-critique on this. The biggest problem is the busy BG. Since you shot at f4, the BG foliage must have been fairly close to the subject to show this much detail so there really isn't anything you could done with the camera settings to get a blurred BG. If you're good at editing, you might be able to blur the BG a bit more which would help. I would select those areas of the upper wings that aren't sharp and try to selectively sharpen that area. You won't be able to make them look sharp but I think you'll be able to get them a bit sharper.

Before I started posting here, I concentrated on getting shots of nice subjects but really didn't pay as much attention to the BG as I should have. Now I spend more time looking for a good BG than I do looking for the subjects themselves. I know you wanted a record of this butterflies visit so this is definitely a keeper but once you have your record, start thinking about what you could do to get an even better shot. The advantage of having your own garden is that you can plant the flowers in places that will give the best shot at giving you a good BG.

BTW, this is a Tiger Swallowtail. :)

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Leon. Welcome to Macro! You captured nice light, good colors, a nice pose, and you have good sharpness in the body and legs of the butterfly. As Ken mentioned, you might try some additional sharpening on the wings. As you already know, it's the distracting background that is holding back this otherwise very good image. Ken has given you some thoughtful suggestions on how you might improve that - now and in the future. Keep them coming. :)

[pat lillich]

Hey Leon,

that is a gorgeous butterfly! I love how clear the legs, antenna and tongue are.... The detail and color of the wings are lovely - and the colors with the flowers and green background are great. Agree with you that the background is distracting - hope you can find an angle to take the next one with the bg more blurry -

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Leon,
Another welcome to the forum! I think the BG stuff has been covered well above so want to add some options......when you are in the field....I often look at the BG's more than the actual subject! Mostly because busy BG's can detract from your subject. I do like some of the flowers in the BG.....but some of the other stalks do take away. Keep in mind that the distance of your subject plays a huge role......the further that BG is to your subject.....the less you have to worry about it and the better it often looks! Another thing is the DOF....given your set-up.....f8 could have worked and pumping the ISO just a touch and sacrificing some SS may be the way to go. Using flash often helps in these cases....especially as fill. Just some things to keep in mind in the field.