‹ Previous Macro & Close-up Gallery Next ›

Emergence

Gallery: Macro & Close-upPosted June 19, 2011240 views11 comments

This butterfly (blanking on the name, so help is welcome! Hairstreak perhaps?) emerged from it's cocoon on the front steps at my girlfriends house as we were working on a front walkway. Glad she spotted it because I never would have! Unfortunately it's position made it impossible to utilize my tripod so I had to hand hold this and manually blend two images for DOF but I think it worked out pretty well. This was originally vertical but I think it's easier to look at horizontally.

Nikon D300s 105mm f/2.8 VR HH
f/9.0
1/80s
ISO 800
-.33 EC

Two images, combined in ACR and blended in photoshop manually for DOF. Minor adjustments, sharpening in CS5 on 27" iMac

- Luke

Comments

11 comments

Comment posted by Cam Held on June 19, 2011 at 10:55 PM

Beautiful butterfly with exquisite detail! I'm amazed you blended two handheld images so well- I guess I've got a lot to learn! Anyhow, nicely done!

-Cam

Registered on November 12, 2009, 59 Posts, 398 Comments

Comment posted by Gary Yeoh on June 20, 2011 at 12:12 AM

Luke:
This is marvelous; good DOF from the blend and keeping the surrounding soft.

Agree with hairstreak.

Registered on September 1, 2009, 588 Posts, 8184 Comments

Comment posted by Ramamohan Pai on June 20, 2011 at 12:17 AM

Luke, This is excellent. Great job on the stacking

Registered on November 1, 2003, 550 Posts, 9037 Comments

Comment posted by SandyRichardsBrown on June 20, 2011 at 1:36 AM

Really niuce detail on the b'fly! nice processing too, if this is 2 hand-helds!
Not so sure about the oof stuff in the front..may have been impossible to avoi, though.

Sandy

Registered on November 24, 2003, 3937 Posts, 12909 Comments

Comment posted by Howard Cheek on June 20, 2011 at 9:09 AM

Beautiful image of this newly emerged Hairstreak, I've never been so lucky myself

The LP looks excellent Luke, no nits!

Registered on July 24, 2008, 1201 Posts, 10758 Comments

Comment posted by Mark Seaver on June 20, 2011 at 9:54 AM

Great job capturing the details in this butterfly. It's a real beauty. On the ID side, it's almost certainly a Banded Hairstreak.

Registered on January 23, 2011, 1103 Posts, 17270 Comments

Comment posted by Jeff Wiles on June 20, 2011 at 9:43 PM

Really neat Lepidoptera shot photographer Luke! An attractive color combo of the subject's gray pattern - against the green background elements. Commendable composition.

Registered on January 22, 2011, 43 Posts, 46 Comments

Comment posted by Bill Fach on June 20, 2011 at 9:52 PM

Luke: Jaw dropping detail on the larger version especially. However there is a flag on the play

. Moths spin a cocoon but butterflies form a chrysalis. Since this is not Flora I can't impose a proper penalty but sending me the RAW file would probably be appropriate.

Fabulous capture of the moment. >=))>

Registered on November 1, 2003, 1805 Posts, 26981 Comments

Comment posted by Luke Ormand on June 20, 2011 at 10:50 PM

Bill . . . in my defense before I remembered it was a Hairstreak I was thinking it was a moth, hence the cocoon comment! But, well played. Can't offer you the RAW though! Besides, you'd have to manually blend 2 images and who has the time for that?!

Registered on February 4, 2009, 1093 Posts, 7035 Comments

Comment posted by Carolyn Derstine on June 21, 2011 at 3:15 PM

Really great detail on this butterfly. Especially impressive since done without a tripod. Great job!

Registered on February 16, 2011, 610 Posts, 3684 Comments

Comment posted by Charlie Baugh on July 30, 2011 at 1:02 PM

Thanks, Luke, for illustrating that stacking is worth more of my time. Have you ever written any guidelines on how to do this?

Charlie

Registered on April 18, 2011, 329 Posts, 1985 Comments