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Giant Swallow Tail

Gallery: Macro & Close-upPosted May 6, 2013136 views6 comments

This was taken in my back yard last fall. The Duranta blooms attracted a lot of butterflies. I have a few more from the same time that I will post soon. The background is from the fall colors on the trees in my neighbors yard.

Nikon D200 105mm Macro
Shot at 1/1600 of a sec at f/3 ISO 320
Natural light
Shot as a JPEG and processed for contrast and sharpness in LR4.
Cropped to square.

Comments

6 comments

Comment posted by SandyRichardsBrown on May 7, 2013 at 2:49 AM

Nice position of the butterfly, and a variety of interesting colours.
The large version shows a tremendous amount of noise, however - likely froma crop much larger than the D200's pixels can handle.
Sandy

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

Comment posted by Gary Yeoh on May 7, 2013 at 2:53 AM

Sanjay:

Welcome to Flora. Love the swallowtails; they are large and majestic with many different patterns and color. This one is really pretty. Tack sharp and beautiful supporting color in the bloom and bg. Very well done

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

Comment posted by scott lanz on May 7, 2013 at 6:35 PM

Hi Sanjay, welcome to the Macro & Close up gallery. I like the way you composed and executed this with the swallowtail well positioned on the purple blooms and nicely separated from the the very colorful background. The profile view of the swallowtail is nice, and the swallowtail is gorgeous. Thanks for sharing.

Registered on November 14, 2003, 840 Posts, 12902 Comments

Comment posted by Mark Seaver on May 9, 2013 at 11:21 PM

What a great background and pose. The flowers seem oversharpened because of their white rims, but that may be exactly how these flowers are and the butterfly seems just a bit overexposed with the body in particular looking washed out, there do seem to be enough details that post processing should fix the blown highlights.

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

Comment posted by Sanjay Sundaram on May 11, 2013 at 11:50 PM

Thanks everyone. Appreciate the warm welcome and feedback.

Sanjay

Registered on April 9, 2013, 107 Posts, 725 Comments

Comment posted by William Baer on June 7, 2013 at 9:10 AM

Great catch! Nice composition, I feel that it is a bit over exposed, some of the detail is being lost and highlights in the wings. A tighter crop might help also. Maybe get ride of that horizontal flower under the butterfly. I am not sure if you use Photoshop or not but you could really correct everything here in PS. Light Room is also really good for editing. I would also shoot in Raw if your camera is capable. You loose a ton of information in Jpeg. Nikon is a great camera also.

Registered on April 1, 2013, 60 Posts, 51 Comments