Oleander Moth

[Leon Robinson Jr.]

I've got Oleander Moths flying all over and am finding many dead just lying on the ground. I've seen a number of them being attacked by wasps while feeding on my Sweet Almond Bush. This is a busy picture with the stem to the right taking your eyes away but it reflects where I am seeing a lot of the moths. Comments are always welcomed.

Canon 7D - 300mm + 25 tube - 1/160 - f7.1 - ISO 400 - Cropped - chair used as camera support

[Ken Childs]

Hey Leon, this is an amazing looking moth! This must be one of the wasp mimics.

Your self critique already take cares of the overly busy part of this so I'll skip that. The bug itself doesn't look all that sharp but the leaf in the FG does and the flowers right behind it look fairly sharp so it must be something about the bug itself. I would bet that doing some extra sharpening on just the moth can fix that problem.

Keep watching for these things. I'm sure that one will eventually land in a less busy location, hopefully with the same awesomely colored BG. :)

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Leon. This very cool looking critter is a Polka-dot Wasp Moth (Syntomeida epilais) and is - as you've no doubt noticed - a wasp mimic. :) I agree about the stem on the right being distracting and that you might try some selective sharpening on just the moth. If you have the pixels, you might also consider a tighter crop to reduce the distractions. I would suggest cropping from the right to within about 1 cm of the moth's right wing and then taking a sliver off the left and a little off the bottom. :) Keep working on these very colorful moths - they are worth the effort.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Leon,
Can't add much to the excellent critiques above.....just keep at it and if possible....just getting a bit closer in the field would go a very long way!

[Anita Bower]

I know nothing about moths, etc., but can say that this one is gorgeous. Thanks for sharing. It looks nice against the beautiful lavender flowers. The colors and composition work nicely here, and the busyness doesn't bother me much. However, one way to deal with it is to blur the part of the image you don't want and to paint over it with a low opacity brush. Here is a very quick rendition of what I have in mind.