Update Photo
Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Going through my photos and found this nice one of a butterfly. I have observed that sometimes they like to just sit in the sun.
I did darken the background but maybe it needs more.
90D EF 100-400 @ 400mm 1/500 f/14 ISO 800
Dean, what a beautiful capture you got here. I am glad you filled the frame with the butterfly. The color palette is soft where it needs to be. The photo is sharp and well-composed. Personally, the BG looks fine to me. If you’d like to experiment with some burning, I would only try to minimize the highlights on the left side near the leaf that is cut off. If the image was cropped and you have more on the left side, I would try to recover the portion of the leaf that is cut off just for aesthetic reasons. Otherwise, the image is very nice and pleasing as is.
Quite a gorgeous creature. The colors look so natural and right. You could take down the exposure of the bg foliage if you want, I think that would be easy and make the subject stand out a tiny bit more. I wish there was a touch more DOF, but these guys are so fluttery that I think any capture at this quality is good. I’m surprised the butterfly also looks so good. Usually this late in the season they are kind of beat up.
Hi Dean 
What a wonderful composition of this BF!
The colors and the setting all look very natural. The yellow and orange work very well together and the bits of pollen against the green leaf at the bottom is bonus material in my view.
My personal view is that the image could benefit from a nice medium intensity vignette, that would take care of bright areas in the BG and, serve to better frame the BF.
As a nitpicking item I might be tempted to clone out or remove the small bit of yellow at the very bottom edge but that’s pretty minor (it’s not a distraction, it’s just an improvement idea).
Nicely done and I hope you’re doing well!
Lovely find! I would also like to see the leaf tip but that’s not a huge issue. The butterfly is well-presented but I don’t love the BG in the top and right. The BF and flower are sharp and it was easy to select them. That let me blur the areas I found distracting, and also lowered contrast there a little. (Field blur will respect selection edges, unlike Gaussian Blur.) A similar and probably better result could be obtained with some low-opacity cloning. I should have also burned down the UR corner.
Beautiful catch and composition, Dean. I’m particularly fond of the shadow of the left antenna on the flower petal. I do agree with Diane on the background and her changes/suggestions were about where I would have gone with it.
Dean, such a nice look at this beauty. I really like what Diane did, now all the attention belongs to the BF and flower she is on. I too like that shadow of the antenna. You managed the light quite well. Nicely done.
Thanks for the feedback and good suggestions, @Merv , @Kris_Smith , @Diane_Miller , @Shirley_Freeman , @Dennis_Plank , and @EgĂdio. I also darken the background a bit and added a very soft inverted Radial Gradient
Dean, the edits do make a noticeable difference in highlighting the BF very nicely. Such a beauty!
Great job on the repost, Dean.
