Spring Swallowtail

[Jeffrey Sipress]

At North Lake, in the eastern Sierra, I captured this Swallowtail on a wild iris.

Canon 1Ds, 70-200 2.8L

http://machinearts.com/fredphotos/tiger3.jpg

[Robert O'Toole]

Nice image Jeffery, the subject and the bloom make a great combination, they are 2 of my favorites.

2 things I see that I think would definately help improve the image. Crop some of the dead space behind the B-Fly, removing the grass blade would be a bonus. Large empty spaces can be distracting.
Then lower the contrast, the image looks great but the whites are a little too light, a little lacking in detail. The contrast make the image and subject stand out, but the highlights have suffered in this case.

Robert

[Fabs Forns]

The first thing I noticed when I saw the image was the high contrast. Doing a reverse curve would help some. Agree with robert about getting some of the left side off. Keep them coming :)

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Jeffrey,
Nice capture, also agree with the rest about the dead space behind your subject and cloning out the blade of grass...:D

[Ed Vatza]

Well Jeff, I can see what the others are saying and the crop and clone may help the image overall but I must say that I personally like the image pretty much as it is even though it is a tad overdone.

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Thanks, everyone, for the tips. It was a pretty high contrast scene, being done mid-day. The dynamic range exceeded my camera's ability to capture it all. I made some attempts to 'save' it, but I still lost detail in the whites.