The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Eastern Tiger Swallowtails were out and about at Brookside Gardens this past weekend. Patience was the key to capturing this in camera as the swallowtails glided and floated from plant to plant. I was shooting with a 105 macro lens and I found it to be too short so went to DX crop mode (157mm) to get closer without disturbing and got this shot. Handheld with Diffused Flash.
Gorgeous!! You got more DOF than I would expect, and quite enough to satisfy my roving eyes. I wonder about cropping a little from the right to remove some distracting elements there? In a way I like the balance but there is a lot going on there. Maybe some subtle lowering of contrast and saturation or more blur??? But at any rate, my attentions is on the butterfly!
An excellent look at this beautiful Swallowtail, John. I love the position you caught him in. I am good with the composition, and I am not sure how you could crop it differently but what some of the flowers would be partly cropped out. To me the focus goes to the BF. The BG is smooth, but on my screen, it seems too green, so not sure what is causing that. It is a wonderful look at this beauty.
Thank you both for your assessments. There was a lot more flower clutter to the right prior to my crop. I didn’t think I could take it further. Diane, I will try some of the techniques you suggest to deemphasize the clutter. The background is pretty much as is. I was shooting pretty level to the subject and the background was far off and green. Thanks again. Glad you both liked it. John
What a great pose and angle you have - and with the proboscis down, too. To me the crop and arrangement of the flowers makes for a good stage for this beauty. The wings seem pretty intact, too - bonus!
That said I find the colors too saturated and the highlights are oddly blue. This is evident in the eyes and legs of the butterfly and would probably be the result of a very low black point or a high saturation level. I see it in the tiny fly wings too. In my experience these butterflies are paler than this although that does vary.
Great bug-level view makes for a very engaging photo.
Thanks Kris. Good eye! I think I pulled that blue saturation slider maybe just a tad too much trying to pull out that faint blue patch in the tip of swallowtail’s wing. John
My preference would be for this to be shot at at least f8 to get the nearer wings very sharp. That said, you have a beautiful BG because of your aperture, so your choice was personal taste, and the result is strikingly colourful.
Tiger Swallowtails can be quite challenging because they are rarely quiet. You did well catching this one on a good looking flower with a nicely smooth background. I also like your comp. with a good mix of flowers and BF. As a side note, going to DX mode for a larger apparent view is exactly the same as cropping to that size in your processing software. The actual magnification is fixed by the size of the subject at the film plane.
Thank you Mike for weighing in. I started at f/8 but because I was using the 105 I couldn’t get close enough to the Swallowtails without them flying off so I had to give ‘em room and at f/8 the background was coming too into focus. So I opted for the shallower depth of field.
