The Five Colors Butterfly

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Probably the most celebrated butterfly in Korea and Japan, the Great Purple Emperor is known by the title above as its Korean name. Now is the time to see it, but you have to be on your toes. The fresh males come down to imbibe minerals for a day or two, then off they go to the canopy to wait for the females to emerge. I’ve yet to see a female; but the males are the more decorative, though smaller. While sucking up the minerals, they can be approached very close - however, they only open their wings to frighten off other insects like flies, so you need to click away like crazy. This was the most handsome of the 4 or 5 I saw today.

Specific Feedback

I removed a large leaf from the foreground. Are traces of this visible?

Technical Details

D500 + 150-600mm lens (@150mm) 1/2000 f6.3 ISO 10000

A large crop and high ISO - it was dark in the woods. Topaz Denoise did a reasonable job, and further sharpening with Noiseware.


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1 Like

Wow, no wonder there are celebrations for this butterfly. What a striking pattern and that color is amazing. So is your persistence in waiting for one to pose well. Whatever you removed is gone and I don’t see any evidence for that. A keeper.

Wonderful image, Mike. I don’t see any traces of your leaf removal. Interesting natural history tidbit as well.

The noise reduction is pretty good and I would be tempted at trying to use slightly less so that more of the body hairs are defined better. Color is fantastic and whites are fairly bright. With the D500, those bright whites may show some clipping. There’s a little bit of artifact stuff between the green and gray interface of the rock. That’s about it–lots of good stuff as I like the comp and the colors of the subject. Sharpness is spot on. I think that you handled this well under less than ideal shooting conditions. Well done!

I’ve never seen one like this before, Mike. Really nice looking BF and you did a fine job capturing it.

Mike: A new one for me as well and reminds me of the behavior of Blue Morphos. We have a wonderful butterfly pavilion in the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences where Blue Morphos frustrated me for years trying to get an open wing shot. At least they are pretty closed up. I don’t see any evidence of your leaf clean up. I kind of wish the BG was all rock without the small patch of grass in the URC but so it goes. Great capture of a great subject. >=))>

Wonderful with a gorgeous wings open pose! Extra points for the patience! I don’t see any evidence of leaf removal. Good job with the high ISO!

@Bill_Fach @Kris_Smith @Shirley_Freeman @Diane_Miller @Dennis_Plank @Jim_Zablotny - thank you; will try to get a better view today, but they’ve probably gone up to the treetops now!