Chris, yes, I'd say a tad more at the top just to give the antenna a bit more room in the frame. You did a really nice job on getting the butterfly in great detail but that BG is a bit distracting. Have you tried lightening and blurring it a bit?
Also, it would really help if you added what speed and aperture you took this at. Thanks!
A lovely b'fly, Chris. Used to see a lot when I lived in St. Louis, MO. To add to Julie's comments, I'd spcifically darken, clone, or change color to a shade of green for the OOF flower just off the UR tip of the b'fly, and darken the brigther greens in the LL. Bright spots in the BG tend to pull attention away from a subject. Your exposure data should be in your metadata.
Enjoy imaging more butterflies & flowers while we in the Midwest and East Coast have a glimpse of fall colors before everything goes brown for the winter :)
Regretfully the metadata is lost with the original somewhere in my vast unavigable data bankof images. I just bought Lightroom 2 and am in the process of learning it. Julie, great idea as all I have done so far is a blur and some sharpening. Bruce I will be enjoying the flutterbiies for as long as i can. the lower valleys had their first frost last week.
Denise,
I started chuckling when I pulled it up. It would make a great childrens' book about a butterfly that has a curse put and it has to find a special flower to have the curse removed. So all you flower photographers out there had better get to work!
God bless,
Great sharpening and nice pose, over all the butterfly is very good. The negative is of course the contrasty BG.
My new PS CD that I am working on now features a tutorial on this exact type of situation with a tight edge and a tricky BG. Email me with your email address and I can add you to my newsletter for more info.