Reworked…
Is this a composite? No
This is a much better composition, with the Skipper (generally considered a butterfly but it has some characteristics of a moth, so a sort of hybrid) off-center balanced by the flower. You have wonderful detail on the Skipper but again whites are too bright without detail, which is very distracting. I assume you are shooting raw and doing raw conversion in something on an iPad, but I forgot the details. You might toss them into each post. Do you have a Highlights slider in the raw converter? Various Camera Profiles that you can apply?
Great capture, Vanessa. You’ve gotten wonderful detail in the skipper. I agree with @Diane_Miller about the whites.
Lovely Vanessa. Whites are a bit hot but Skipper is excellent. Nice and sharp and really a good pose.
Hi, Vanessa. I agree with all the above observations. If you could get the whites under control, this would be an outstanding effort.
Vanessa, another nice shot of the skipper. I think I like the face on better (not sure why, but I love face on shots of birds, etc., too). Both are very nice.
The composition is pretty nice and I like the BG too. The exposure is fine for the skipper, but the flower is way too bright. Using the highlights slider in your photo editing software can pull back those highlights to something more reasonable for the scene. Well done as this is a challenging scene for any dslr…Jim
Hi all! @Shirley_Freeman @linda_mellor @Diane_Miller @terryb @David_Leroy @Jim_Zablotny thank you for all your feedback and suggestions, I went back in to this one and the other one, started from scratch, and brought highlights and whites down as far as I could, not sure if it makes any difference, I know my time of day doesn’t help….
Vanessa, to me it improved the image. You are right, when it is harsh lighting, it makes it bad to really improve it in post, but I totally get it that when the subject is posing, and you have the camera, you try to capture what you can. He certainly did his part at posing, and you have did a fine job capturing him, and to me it looks like you improved the whites by pulling the highlights down.
I agree, @Shirley_Freeman, I like the face on shots the best too! There’s a connection that you’re making with the animal.
