tom_whelan

I like it- it has a lovely dreamy quality and vivid color. The backlighting works, and the bright areas below the butterfly aren't too distracting. I'd like it sharper, though- perhaps just a matter of USM.

 

I think the image would be stronger if the frame were only the main diagonal spike and the butterfly, cropped about 60% from the top left corner.

Does the compostion of this work for you? Comments requested...

The colors look great. It looks a little soft, but I bet your slide is sharper and has more shadow detail. The cicada would look better to the right, and not centered, a crop would do it.

 

I wish the background weren't black, but that's the way it is sometimes. Lighting the background is impractical. Your lighting angle did a great job on the subject.

I've posted this elsewhere, but there hasn't been much comment. I'm

fond of it though- a great opportunity (mating butterflies, nice

pose), and I did a decent job with the composition. What do you think-

does it have impact, or soes it fall flat?

Thanks Dominique and Sharad!

 

Dominique, faster shutter speeds got me the ripples. Ones in the series for this shot at 1/30 or so were smoother, this one was 1/60 or 1/80 and F8, I think. There was a slight breeze cuasing the ripples; this was a twilight so there wan't much light.

How do you think this one stacks up- just another picture of a common

bird? Taken at Great Meadows in April of this year.

Really common, but a favorite of mine. More dynamic than my usual

butterfly composition, taken just a fraction of a second before the

butterfly took off. What do you think?

Beautiful specimen of a lovely butterfly, one I don't know in the US. Nice picture, strong composition, clean background, nice perch. If it's from film, bet the slide looks sharper, wings are a little soft.

Wonderful caterpillar, but the dark background merges with the subject.

Might be stronger cropped to just the male- nice in any case.

A recent butterfly picture of a unusual butterfly, the Baltimore

checkerspot. What do you think of it as an image?

Thanks for all the kind words.

 

Mark, once I got lined up parallel with the wings of the two butterflies, I took the background I got. This pair was in great position, low in the foliage, so I could get a predominantly green background- I remember thinking that much as I shot.

I've switched to digital SLR, and this is my first butterfly picture

with the new equipment. What do you think?

Hey, Michael, I might have slightly underexposed... I wouldn't extrapolate to far on that! :)

Comments welcome on this closeup of a long legged fly in farly unusual

lighting.

Thanks for the comments. On the flower position, this was cropped from a version that had was oblong with the flowers in the lower third. I had several people advise me to go with this squarish crop, to eliminate a shadow area that was at the top.

A recent picture of mine- any comments welcome.

A really good, strong image. I had the same comment that others have posted regarding the softness and lack of detail. Presumably the original is much better. Post bigger images! A lot of people post little ones here. I always post a 1024x768 version so the "large" version does a decent job of rendering detail.

and winning as a picture. A frank and honest pose in this one. Great color and clarity. The whole group of model pictures is really successful.

Nicely composed, interesting color, warm but almost monochromatic yellow/browns. The only nitpick I'd make is that a smaller aperture might have given you more DOF for the background, or you could have brought the foreground in sharp focus and blurred the background a bit.

A beautiful subject, nice exposure and great color, but the focus is a little soft. Did you use a tripod?

Thanks for the comment Alex-- what alternative angle do you have in mind?

Your rating doesn't look bad now!

I like both this picture and your icy tree, but in both I wish they were more asymmetrical. Putting the subject at or near dead center is something I like to avoid. This one would have been an even more interesting shot at a different angle through the opening, and the whole placed somewhere other than the center, maybe with slight interior wall illumination for more context/detail. Just a suggestion. It's a nice picture as is!

Nice colors, but you might want to try spot-metering on the highlights (the flower's center in your picture) so you don't overexpose. Or use another exposure technique: bracketing a series of shutte speeds or using exposure compensation.