Hi Santhru - what a lovely little creature! Yesterday I just couldn’t get near any of the butterflies I saw and should have used the long lens like you did, but I only had a macro with me. Bah. And you have butterfly parks??!! That’s so great. I’ve seen some enclosures for butterflies at arboretums here in the States, but that’s about it.
Firstly the details are pretty good as is the exposure. The flower just below it might be a tiny bit too bright, but the white in the wings and body looks good to me and I can see the textures quite easily. Actually, when I look at the image in the viewer, the flowers look fine. The position of the subject in the frame is awkward though being so far to the right. It feels jammed in there with no where to go. Generally our brains react well to subjects on the left with space to the right and I think it’s mainly because so many languages are read and written in that direction. So…if you’re shooting I’d try to keep the subject in the center to give yourself some options for cropping. With this one, if you don’t have room over there or if there is something ugly/distracting, you could turn to adding canvas and allowing Photoshop to fill in more foliage, or you could do a square crop which I think might work well. While you’re at it, you could just turn down the luminosity and the saturation in the greens. Not much so they look muddy or like they aren’t part of the scene, but so they won’t overwhelm the star of the show.
Hope that makes sense and is helpful.
If you do take another swing at it, showing your edited image side by side with the original image is a good idea. Viewers won’t have to scroll up and down to search for the edited image. While doing this, it is also helpful to edit the post’s title to indicate a revised image. Here’s what I suggest:
At the bottom of your post, click the pencil to edit the post. You are then taken to the edit mode of your entry. If you want the edited image to appear first, I suggest placing the cursor at the top before the original image. Otherwise, go to the line after the original image and upload the new image. Since you are in edit mode, you can add new text before/after the images to ensure viewers know the original and edited versions. You can also edit the post’s title and add something to indicate a reworked or newly edited image. For example, some people add (+ rework) after the post title. I hope this helps.
Santhru: Welcome to NPN and thanks for a good first post. When I first joined NPN about 25 years ago my first posts were of butterflies I shot at our local butterfly center. Compared to yours my early efforts were pretty pitiful so you’re off to a good start. Great advice from Kristen. We don’t have this exact species here but we have some that are similar and they are pretty tiny guys. Ours are about the size of an American quarter or half dollar so if this is close to full frame you were able to get pretty close to the subject and your plane of focus management looks spot on. I’ve done a quick and dirty crop just to give you a feel for what @Kris_Smith was suggesting. All that OOF stuff on the left doesn’t add anything to the image so just make it go away. BTW, I did get better with butterflies and a whole lot more through my participation in NPN. Great to have you aboard and looking forward to watching your growth. >=))>
Santhru, welcome to NPN. Always pleasing to see another macro lover join. Bill’s crop above is really a compliment to you, as the butterfly still looks sharp, though it’s blown up quite a bit more. I don’t know if you have Lightroom, but it has an adjustment brush which you could carefully apply to the upper forewing area just to give it a bit more sharpness. You’re lucky, we only have one Pierrot in Korea!
