nikon d 800
500 mm
nikon d 800
500 mm
Butterflies and flowers are certainly good for the "Summertime" theme. Do you want me to add "theme"?
The Monarch is lovely and you captured a great pose. And I really like that orange colors are in both the wings and the flowers. I think the bkgd texture is a bit too heavy and pulls the eye away from the main subject.
Nice job on the painting Stu, I really like the simplified colors and painterly look. I do agree that the filter makes the bg look very busy; it's possibly the only drawback to the oil paint filter. I'm thinking out loud here, but it might be cool to try selecting the background and running a separate pass of the filter on it, with larger brush strokes (scale).
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Please visit me on the web at http://kerryperkinsphotography.com
A classic: Monarch on Butterfly Weed! Good for you. Great image. Beautiful colors. I agree with above comments about the bg being distracting because of the paint filter, but I think this is the style you like, and your preference is what counts. You might clone the bit of darker green in lower left corner. The green bg is perfect to show off the flower and butterfly.