A friend asked me to watch his butterfly house while he was out of town. It had Black Swallowtail chrysalises overwintering in it. A male butterfly emerged yesterday and I released it this morning (glad it is so warm here now).
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
I bought a new flash diffuser over the winter and am starting to try it out. I used it in this shot.
Any comments would be appreciated.
Technical Details
Canon 90D, Sigma 150 f2.8 macro, 1.4x teleconverter, Canon 430EX II speedlite with Angler diffuser.
ISO 400, f32, 1/250s, hand held
Wow – a pristine specimen on a very pleasing perch! The diffused light is wonderful, as is the BG color. I wonder about bringing out a tiny bit more detail in the blacks (Darks slider in raw conversion), but more of an idea than a suggestion. The velvet look here is very nice.
Allen, what a nice job to have, watching your friend’s butterfly house! Throw you in the briar patch, huh? He is beautiful. Positioned well, and nice smooth BG. The diffuser worked nicely. I am wondering about just a slight bump in brightness/exposure for the overall image. Just looks slightly dark on my screen here. I hope this guy hangs around and poses some more for you. He is pristine. Hopefully you will be seeing more of them too. Congratulations on your new flash and diffuser.
Looks like your new diffuser is working well, at least the results look good.
Some are cumbersome to use while others aren’t so I hope you’re pleased with that part.
Wonderful to see some fresh BF images showing up.
It’s been pretty cold here in central NC until today, now it’s open windows and short sleeve shirts.
I imagine it’s close to the same in TN
Love the BG and the perch, and it’s an almost perfect specimen since he just emerged.
I hope you get plenty more shots during your stay there
Babysitting butterflies?! That’s fantastic. I’m jealous. Agreed that the perch works wonderfully here - a bit of environment, but not so much that we want to spend time studying it. Instead all eyes are where they should be. That said I think the diffuser is working to give you some even light, but as a result the image lacks what I call sparkle. So I pulled it into Photoshop and did this -
I hope this works for you. I ran a clarity action from the TK8 panel and confined it to a selection of just the butterfly. Then I put a curves layer over that and raised the mid tones slightly and pulled the blacks down a bit, too. For me this improves the detail in the wings and gives some tonal separation which makes the sparkle. What a gorgeous creature. May you be tapped for babysitting duty again!
Allen, this is a lovely view of this nicely fresh Swallowtail, in a great setting. My calibrated monitor shows plenty of detail in the blacks and a nice sparkle in the blue patches. Your diffuser lets the details show well as it holds back the contrast. Kris’s treatment creates more of a sunny day, high contrast look, but loses some of the detail in the blacks. If you want a bit more drama, you might try adding some mid-tone contrast, but this looks fine as presented.
