Butterfly in flight

Sandy - A butterfly frozen in flight by itself is an achievement. Swallowtails like the one you have photographed are amongst the very active butterflies which hardly sit still when sun is up. Even when they are feeding, their body tends to move quite a bit and needs good shutter speed/flash to freeze them well enough.

I like the implied (or may be real) motion of the butterfly moving towards the bunch of flowers in the front. Keep shooting these - usually clean backgrounds work the best. One day you will succeed.

Hi Sandy. As Ram said, you did well to catch this one in flight - no easy task, especially to get the torso head and legs sharp as you did. I like the comp, including the position of the BF, and the contrasting pretty pink flowers. My only issue here is with the iso and resulting grain/overall image quality. Given that you shot this nearly wide open, I assume the light was not optimal. Certainly a good effort with a lot going for it.

Thanks for the comments guys! The light was terrible - it was at sundown, and I happened to step out on my front porch and noticed a butterfly landing and moving about the flowers and I thought that I would see if I could get a good shot with anything but the appropriate lens, but that's all I had that could reach the butterfly. Although it fell short technically, it was fun for me to catch one in flight in that it was my first butterfly shot since getting my DSLR. Now that I have a macro lens I stay on the lookout, but apparently the word has gotten out to the butterfly population to avoid my house and garden at all costs!

Late to the party, but a cool image!