Queen Butterfly

[Nathan Nitzky]

Queen Butterfly <i>Danaus gilippus</i>, Gilbert Water Ranch. Nikon 500mm f/4P, Extension Tube, D300s
f/8, 1/1250sec, ISO 200


<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nnitzky/4718573480/" title="butterfly_06202010_01 by nnitzky, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4059/4718573480_756c0c918e_b.jpg" width="683" height="1024" alt="butterfly_06202010_01" /></a>

[Ken Childs]

Hi Nathan, this is a fantastic looking butterfly! I wish they ranged further east. The exposure looks good, the BG looks great and most of the butterfly looks nice and sharp but the front antenna and the flower in the FG are a bit OOF. You should have easily been able to use a smaller aperture for more DOF and still had a fairly fast SS. With the setup you used, somewhere between f12 and f16 probably would have done the trick. If you have more canvas or are good with cloning, I'd consider giving this a CW rotation...enough so the wing is pointing towards the URC.

Overall this is a very nice shot and I'm looking forward to more of your work. Keep them coming! :)

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Nathan,
Great advice by Ken on the DOF and other possible tweaks. You may also consider lightening the wings a few points...mostly the rear one in the shadow.....not too much!..... just a hint to give them even a bit more pop.

Nicely done overall!

[Nathan Nitzky]

Thanks Ken and Roman, Good points. Was worried about stopping down too much because I wanted to be sure the bg was nice and soft. Will try doing a little rotation to see how it looks, and I'm awaiting the arrival of my calibration hardware and software to finally calibrate my monitor... have had a lot of comments that my images are dark, both here and at NSN. I thought it was just my personal preference until I looked at some of my stuff at work on a different computer and they look a bit dark to me too! I really appreciate the suggestions from everyone.
-Nathan

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Nathan. This is a very nice image - good pose, sharp, nice background, and a nice specimen. Ken and Roman have offered some good tweaking suggestions for you to consider. On my monitor the image looks just a bit dark overall, but it's a minor point and easily adjusted. Well done - and keep them coming. :)