Female Eastern tiger swallowtail (Yellow form)

[Ben Harris]

Click this link for EXIF data.

I really like this shot. It was taken in my garden on Sunday. She stuck around for close to an hour. This was really the only shot that jumped out at me.

I'm slowly but surely learning to consider the background before pushing the button. I had better shots than this, but the background was terrible. It's also too bad about the beetle that's sharing the flower with the butterfly, kinda hides her face.

I've considered cropping it to a square and cutting off the top but I like the color in the background, so I'm torn.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Ben, welcome to the forum. First off the butterfly and flower look fairly sharp with nice even lighting. I find the simpler the image(with the least distractions)generally are the strongest. Even though the flowers in the upper half are pretty they are taking away from the impact of your center of interest. The strength lays with the 2 pink flowers and butterfly.
If it's inline with your values I would take out the beetle...

[Harold Davis]

i kinda like the bg, but the wing merging with the purple flower above really takes away for me. i wish for a little more separation. that's a good call, dave on chopping off the top. didnt think of that til i read your comment.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Ben Big Warm Welcome

Checked out the tech info and noticed its a jpeg? ... would suggest going to RAW since it makes a difference. Conversion is easy and today storage is not a problem with current HD !!

Having trouble with the merging flowers both the reds up top and yellows at the bottom ... without would be a nice looking image. These guys are not easy and you need to persevere to come up with a winner !!! btw on the tech side not sure if 5.6 was wide open? if not would do so for gaining shutter speed !!! Looking forward to the next one !!!

[Ben Harris]

I liked this image because it kind of reminds me of Paul Licht's work which I am a fan of.

Checked out the tech info and noticed its a jpeg? ... would suggest going to RAW since it makes a difference. Conversion is easy and today storage is not a problem with current HD !!

Defiantly not! I'm not sure why the EXIF says JPEG, but it was absolutly shot in RAW. JPEG is for point and shoots.

Having trouble with the merging flowers both the reds up top and yellows at the bottom ... without would be a nice looking image. These guys are not easy and you need to persevere to come up with a winner !!! btw on the tech side not sure if 5.6 was wide open? if not would do so for gaining shutter speed !!! Looking forward to the next one !!!

Changed the crop to remove the yellows at the bottom. Yes, 5.6 is wide open. :( I was actually strobing here as well. Unfortunately my D60 doesn't do HSS, so I'm stuck at 1/200.

Here's a recrop with some cloning. GIMP's heal tool leaves a little to be desired. Well, actually a lot. Course, there's a good chance that the error lies between the chair and keyboard. Cloned out the bug and got the wing away from the upper flower. I think it works OK, but I really don't have the chops yet to do major edits like this well. I considered blurring the yellow flowers to the right to push them into the background but I couldn't make it look right, so I gave up and left it as is.

Your critique is always valued, thank you for it.