Swallow Tail in Michigan

[Randy Stout]

Each year I go to Grand Rapids Michigan to the Meijers Gardens for their temporary butterfly display. It had just opened three days ago, so lots of new and relatively fresh butterflies. They are replenished throughout the six week show.
Shooting conditions are a bit of a challenge as no tripods or monopods are allowed, it is often quite crowded, and the lighting can be quite varied. It was a bright sunny day, which can be good and bad. Good in that the lighting is better, bad in that the butterflies become so active that they won't sit still long enough to capture them.

Roy Van Loo came along, complete with some fresh backgrounds that he crafted for this year, one of which is used in this image.

D4 Sigma 180mm f/10 1/500s ISO 640. As mentioned, none of the usual supports are allowed, but I do use a very short monopod stuck into a belt cup. It never touches the ground, so they don't squawk too much. Very nice people, just very strict on the rules.

Post: Full frame, removed a couple of spots on the background. Selective sharpening.

Advice and comments always appreciated.

Cheers

Randy

[John Robinson]

Get back to your birds !!! Thats a nice sharp shot and killer BG
How do you do the BG,s? - printed or what?
Great stuff Randy
John

[Jonathan Ashton]

Very nice indeed Randy the butterfly is beautifully exposed, the background is complimentary and the visible leaves are not distracting. The slightly diagonal positioning certainly lifts the image, nice shot well done.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Randy, love the striking black of the Butterfly against the soft mottled backdrop. As Jonathan mentioned, being slightly at an angle bolsters the comp IMHO. If my understanding is right and this is a set-up, personally I do find the intersecting leaf over he head slightly distracting and it would perhaps have been cleaner without it as you had overall control, however you may have felt the leaf does bring something to the 'party'? Personally I might have just lifted the blacks/darks in a Luminosity channel/curves adjustment to bring a hint more detail out, but all personal tastes.

I appreciate you clarified the backdrop situation Randy, as often people do not and promote it as 'natural' and that to me is worse that manipulating (cloning) an image.
Sorry Randy, could not resist a quick tweak just to illustrate my thoughts WDYT, but a great image to start with.

TFS
Steve

[Randy Stout]

Thanks guys:

I appreciate your valuable input, and the repost Steve. The original did have the blacks slightly brighter. On my wide gamut NEC, they look fine as posted, but on some of my other monitors, a bit dark, so will do a tweak on the master file to go a bit brighter there.

I do agree that the head is cleaner without the leaf. I don't normally do a lot of cloning, so tend to leave in stuff that could be removed.

Having said that, I should have removed the dead brown leaf in lower right corner, as you have done Steve. I am OK with leaf in front of the head.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

Cheers

Randy

[Steve Kaluski]

Randy, I'm just going by the histogram so the darks are purely personal.

I don't normally do a lot of cloning, so tend to leave in stuff that could be removed.

I think as it was a set up then a quick snap for comp you could have either repositioned or removed the leaf, that is where set ups come into their own, because you can really 'garden' the environment and tailor to suit.

[Steve Maxson]

Beautiful work, Randy! Nice specimen giving you a great pose, good comp, and the artificial background works very well. I would agree with removing the brown leaf in the LRC, but I'm OK with the one in front of the head - it looks very natural - and it gives someplace for the OOF front leg to rest. Very nicely done!

[John Robinson]

I have looked at this a while and I agree with Steve M. It may be small part of the image but I feel that bit of leaf is vital to giving the shot a sense of reality, if you like. Seems to balance things a bit. Somehow it didn,t look right chopped off.

Interesting point whatever.
JohnR