Taken in 2009 at the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory in South Deerfield, MA during NENP group outing.
Feedback Requests
This image is full height but with a crop off the left side to eliminate a large area of the OOF perch. I’m tempted to take a bit more to eliminate the remaining OOF pedal in the LLC and the leaf in the ULC, but the comp starts to feel crowded.
Any feeedback on the composition/cropping, and on the image as presented is appreciated!
Pertinent Technical Details
Canon 50D
100 Macro USM
f/4 @ 1/15, ISO 400
Processed in LRC
I think that this is about as much of a crop that you want because the comp is very tight. Colors look fine and the main parts of the butterfly are nice and sharp. If this is a handheld shot I am impressed the crispness at 1/15th of a second exposure. In this type of shot, I prefer using smaller apertures to get more of the antennae ands legs included in the DOF. However, at f4, the BG turned out very nice and helps separate the subject from the BG. A very nice shot as presented…Jim
This was taken on a tripod, but the butterflies were active so I wanted to avoid motion blur on the wings. In retrospect, I should have taken a few more shots at smaller aperture settings.
Thanks again for taking the time to look & comment!
Nice shot, Jim. I agree with @Jim_Zablotny that this is tight enough. The colors look good and you captured the sharpness where needed. I too like it as presented.
Hi, Jim - the comp is balanced and fine, imo. Any tighter would be TOO tight.
Nice subject, with good pose, colours, and sharpness.
Fun digging into older files and seeing what can be upgraded!
Very nice image!
This composition works for me, Jim. the flower fits in with all the rest and the leaf helps border the left side of the image. The butterfly is beautiful While the tips of the antennae and the legs are a bit soft, the important parts are nice and sharp. This image works very well as posted.
Jim, the contrasting colors are real eye candy here. This is out of my wheelhouse with the gear I use. You have to be fleet of movement to catch scenes such as this.
I’m in agreement on the composition and would not crop anymore. The OOF on the left does not bother me at all.
Jim: We have these in the Cockrell Center in Houston. I haven’t been there in some time. They put a tripod restriction in place a number of years ago and at the time my gear wasn’t suitable for macro hand holding. Not the case now so this reminds me to go back. The capture of the butterfly is pretty darn good and the eye and body are sharp. Anything else is a bonus IMO. As for the OOF penta in the corner cropping is a bad choice for the reasons already cited. I did some content aware fill and some careful cloning to make it a bit less distracting. I tried some AI fill and it turned out worse than the old content aware fill option. Go figure. >=))>
Jim, the details in the BF look great, especially the curled proboscis. The comp looks good as is. I would burn-in the bright parts of the flower in the llc to where they match tonally the darker pinks. That might also need some desaturation after the burn-in. As Bill shows, Photoshop’s ability to generate fill (added in 2024, provided you have internet access) works very well also.
