First butterfly of the season

[Randy Stout]

This fellow was captured at our local arboretum, which hosts the largest temporary display of butterflies in the country each spring. They get in 6000 new butterflies per week for a two month period. You never know what you will see.

Nikon D500 Sigma 180 f/3.5  R1C1 macro flash.

No tripods are allowed, so I use a very short monopod resting on a cup at my waist.  They sometimes look at me funny, thinking it somehow must be a violation of the rules, but I never let it touch the ground, so they can't give me too much grief.  It doesn't hurt that I make a point of talking to all the help, ask questions, etc.

Comments and advice always appreciated.

Cheers

Randy

[pluton]

Beautiful insect...and thanks for 'going higher' on the pixel count in the JPEG.  Your close up w/flash setup seems to be working well and you know how to use it.  I wish there was more detail in the blackest parts of the insect, but that might demand a large soft source...difficult to manage in a mobile setup.

[Akira]

Beautiful image in the first place.  The red patterns on the wing work as nice key element surrounded by the monochrome wings and the nearly monochrome background.

[BW]

Wonderful image of a beautiful butterfly I know how hard it is to get these little critters sharp if they are slightly at an angle, but you managed perfectly. I dont know if have desaturated the greens or the bakcground, but to me the butterfly should use a slight increase in color saturation and so should the greenery surrounding it.

[Randy Stout]

Thanks folks for the replies and thoughts.

Borge: I didn't desaturate the original at all, but do appreciate your point.  I have included a version with the vibrance bumped up a bit.

Thanks

Randy

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Nice butterfly. The cold greens probably result from the combination of flash and a waxy coating (cuticle; cuticula) on the foliage.

[David H. Hartman]

The colors look dull probably because the in camera color space was Adobe RGB and the image should have been converted to sRGB as a last step before saving as a JPG. The gamma difference of these color spaces is particularly hard on greens.

Dave Hartman

---

I checked an the color space of the JPG is sRGB so my second guess is the image was assigned a color space of sRGB rather than converted to sRGB.

I could be all wet here.

Dave

[BW]

This version have a bit more color pop

[Randy Stout]

Thanks everyone for your input.  I normally work in ProPhoto color space, but just checked, and it had somehow changed to sRGB.  Perhaps during an Adobe CC update? 

Do people feel like the repost is still too subdued?  I tend to not go overboard with saturation.

Cheers

Randy