Red Admiral (I think) on my finger.

I have had butterflies perch on my fingers and hands several times

while doing photography. On steamy hot Arkansas days they seem to be

attracted to the sweat on the skin. This guy's proboscis was

constantly sampling my finger tip. I had been shooting a Canon

100-400mm IS lens when the butterfly landed on my finger. I had to

change lenses to the 100mm macro without disturbing him. A very

cooperative model!!!!!!!!!

Bill's image of this red admiral is an interesting one. The background is nicely thrown out of focus and is so even that it helps the viewer focus on the butterfly with no distraction.

 

There are three points to discuss here though. The first one is DoF which has been something Bill could have been a little more careful about. In such a focal length and at this distance, DoF becomes too shallow; one inch in and one inch out the CoC's clarity ceases to exist. Now if the photographer doesn't pick a small aperture setting to widen the depth of field the result is that some details falling out of the field blur out, as is the case here with the head and the upper right hand corner of the wing. The second issue here is the lighting which has been a little harsh coming at angle from left with the negative dampening effect on the nice texture and details of the wing. if The light had illuminated the wing at an angle, the details and color would have been pronounced. The third issue is the tonal gradation ( banding) of the detail-less space around the butterfly. There being no details to protect the space against this evil phenomenon, a little

attempt to enhance the light, color saturation, and the enhancement of the tonal range through correction of histogram or manipulation of the luminosity curve is always encountered by the losing of some tonal pixels that results in turning even

blank surfaces ( especially the expanse of the sky or such blurred-out spaces ) into such distracting banded view.

The overall response to the image is that of being pleasing to the eyes, and a very interesting spectacular moment of interaction between man and nature.

Sorry, Bill, for manipulating your image. I did the best I could to make the banding go away. There is an option in Paint Shop Pro XI which eliminates the JPEG artifacts at the edge of the banded regions. The result can be a little noisy which can later be removed by noise removal tools. I also tried to High-pass-filter sharpen your image to enhance the blurry regions a bit. he success rate here is best 60%, but I did my best. The banding can also occur if you turn a very big image file into a very small one since the downsizing software starts to take away some of the tonal information. The result is a downsized image but at the expense of some vital details that can accidentally be the information in the blank area.

Hi Arash,

Thanks for your thoughtful critique of my photo. This was a difficult photo to shoot. In addition to the movement associated with my right hand holding the camera there was the movement of my left hand holding the butterfly. Also, I had to turn my left hand at an awkward angle to try to get the plane of the wings perpendicular to the axis of the lens. Given the subdued lighting of that day, all of this required a faster shutter speed than would have been possible at say f22 or f32.

 

I do not see the banding that you refer to??? The background looks smooth as silk to me.

 

Thanks again for your comments. I will be posting some additional "finger shots" soon.

 

Bill

What you have explained is a photographer's nightmare. I should admit you have done a perfect job if that's what you have been through with this shot.every thing yo described plus the anxiety that the butterfly could decide it had had enough and fly away. yes, given that, I admire your resourcefulness for taking this shot.