I shot this butterfly in Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite NP, July 2006
This is an example of how I used to approach butterfly photography-to get the species ID first, composition 2nd
Canon 20D, Tamron 28-300mm XR Di f3.5-6.3, focal length 300mm, auto WB
1/250sec, f/16, ISO 200, 0 EV, pattern metering, pop-up flash, manual mode
2006 PP: LR 1.0 very tight crop, slight exposure adjustment
2010 PP: LR 2.6
re-cropped to give more bottom, top, and right BG
WB: daylight
exposure adjustment: set black and white points
enhanced clarity and vibrance
tone curve: brought down highlights, lights, darks
HSL: slight boost to yellow and blue hue and saturation
sharpening, NR
dust spot removal, cloned out distracting leaf to the right, smoothed out BG, selective sharpening of wings
the DOF at f/16 allowed for greater sharpness of the whole butterfly, but also a busier background (not sure how successful I was with the clone tool). I used to shoot jpeg, luckily this was in RAW







Reply With Quote

