laying eggs on a Wafer Ash, Ptelea trifoliata, in my yard. Photo caotured at 12:37 p.m.
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Pertinent technical details or techniques: Cabob 60D, Canon 70-300mm IS USM @ 165mm, f/8, 1/1500 sec., ISO 3200, Hand Held. Processed in ACR and PSE 2020 for exposure and cropping. Topaz De-noise applied.
Is this a composite? (focus stacks or exposure blends are not considered composites) No
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Great image, Terry. I love the action and the detail you’ve gotten in the BF. If it were mine, I would consider cropping from the bottom a bit to help focus on the BF and also simplify the image. Nicely done.
Terry, that is way too cool getting to see and photograph a BF laying eggs! Anytime of the day works for this action. Sure, the lighting would be better at other times, but I wouldn’t turn this chance down just because of the mid day light. I agree with @linda_mellor about the crop. The black on him doesn’t seem to be as black as I would expect. Not sure if that got changed in post processing while trying to work with the lighting or what. Still an excellent image as presented, in my opinion.
Another gorgeous butterfly, with great IQ! The light was wonderfully soft. I like the cropped version as the butterfly stands out so well. I’m not sure of the color accuracy but wonder if you could increase saturation on yellows a bit. Might be easy to desaturate the purple in the BG, too. It is a nice color next to the yellows but looks a bit unnatural.
Terry, catching the butterfly laying eggs is a treat. The crop and extra contrast let the repost stand show off the BF well. It looks like this was taken in the shade or as a cloud passed over, that will let the blue sky reflected off the concrete look purple (thanks to Adobe’s adding saturation as colors darken). If PSE lets you add a saturation/desaturation layer and mask it, you can create the layer and desaturate just the blue and/or magenta channel, then use the mask to only apply the desaturation to the purple area.
