Common Buckeye Butterfly

[Allen Sparks]

Canon 40D, Sigma 150mm macro, Tamron Pro SP 1.4 teleconverter, Canon 580 EX II flash
ISO 400, 1/200, f16, hand held, manual exposure mode

Let me apologize for the lack of tilt of the subject...that will be something I will have to work on this summer...:)

[Julie Brown]

Allen, this is sharp and the colors are vibrant. The butterfly stands out well against the green BG. I have little experience with flash, but it seems a bit strong on the flower?

[Vida van der Walt]

Great shot Allen. Love the detail and how the orange of the flower is repeated in the wings. We have similar butterflies in SA and call them "pansies".:)

[Ken Childs]

Allen, the 'fly and the BG look great! The shadow below the 'fly bothers me a bit and believe me, I have hundreds of shots with that shadow.

I don't know how much you cropped away but with that irregular BG, you may be able to tilt the shot in Elements, add some canvas and clone in some extra BG.

[Allen Sparks]

Thanks Julie, Vida, and Ken. This is a full frame shot with no crop so I doubt I would be able to orchestrate a tilt with my current Photoshop skills.

[Adrian David]

Beautiful butterfly and god exposure! I would like just a little more sharpening on the butterfly.

[Ken Childs]

It's not as hard as you might think. :)

First I titled the image and then expanded the canvas by 40% on all sides and then began cloning the BG to the expanded areas. The bottom of the flower was stretched by smudging it down and then I cloned some other parts of the flower to make it look more natural. Every now and then draw a box around the image to see if you've cloned out far enough. Not a great job on the flower but this only took about 10 minutes.

[Julie Kenward]

It just takes practice, Allen! I was looking at the Original post and thought, "You know this would also be nice with no flower at all." I know that gives it no "base" for the image but it might make it look like you caught it in flight. ??? That bf is pure perfection...details are very sharp and the wide open wingspan is lovely to look at.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Allen,
Sweet capture and Ken's repost makes it even stronger! I like the fact you got both antennae visible. As for the shadow.....this is mostly prevelant when you use one flash....especially on the hot shoe. Either try getting it off to the side or get a reflector to bounce some light into the shadow area (least expensive) or 3rd choice is the twin lights.....helped work out that problem greatly!

[Julie Brown]

Roman,

I have a Sigma macro ring flash with twin lights built in. Would that work for the effect you mentioned?

[Roman Kurywczak]

Yes Julie! A little bit flatter light.....but it will reduce the shadow quite a bit. Just remember that you may need to turn it up & down or horizontally.....to remove the shadow side......in this case the lights would have needed to be positioned up& down as he shot horizontally. Make sense?