Critique Common Blue Butterfly (I think?)

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LukeC

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I'm currently housesitting this week, and the lovely garden is full of birds, bugs and all sorts! Here's a few which I believe to be a Common Blue, but I could be wrong! When I went to identify it online I was surprised at how many similar Blues there are. Taken in Surrey, if that affects ID.

LDC_0933 by Luke Case, on Flickr

Common Blue Butterfly? by Luke Case, on Flickr
 
These are lovely Luke. They look like Common Blues to me, but I'm no expert..
 
Lovely shots and that 1st one is very well placed..
 
Very Nice- I would say it's a Common Blue - looking at the underside of the wing

Les :)
 
I was out looking for Common Blues at the weekend and drew a complete blank. I do keep coming back to these images, they are very pleasing and I've just noticed you were looking for critique, so here goes with my attempt at it... with the first and given the light you had I'd have been tempted to stop down to between f8 and f11 to try and get enough depth of field to get more of the wings in focus. I'd also have been tempted to clone out the OOF grass stalk in the bottom right. No real crit of the 2nd, but with both I'd have been tempted to play around with the crop a bit (I'm not a bit fan of a square crop personally)

These are minor things and my personal take, both are excellent shots I'd be very happy to have taken! :)
 
Thanks for the critique, definitely food for thought. As my main subject is almost always birds, and my lens is slow (f6.3 at 600mm) I'm in the habit of leaving it at f6.3 and forgetting about it. I agree that a smaller aperture would have probably been a good thing; if the sun's out I'll have a try tomorrow but I'll have to be more careful about the background. As for the cloning... I seem to have gone off it a bit lately for some reason, and prefer to leave stuff unless it really stands out. Maybe I'll have a quick go at that as well tomorrow to see how it looks. Thanks for the feedback!
 
I agree with Si about experimenting with smaller apertures and seeing how the balance between DOF and background rendition comes out. I know it is different subject matter, but FWIW with flowers I often use aperture bracketing so I get a series of images like this, from (mFT) f/2.8 to f/22 from which I can then pick the one I like best (occasionally more than one). Definitely worth experimenting with different apertures - it can make a big difference sometimes.


1529 4 1521 43 Aperture bracket sequence, F2.8 to F22 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Personally I wouldn't be inclined to touch the OOF grass stalk; to my eye it fits well, especially given it looks like a bit of a "reflection" of the in focus stalk, and given the direction the butterfly is pointing in relation to the angle of the OOF stalk. And for me the square crop works well. Which just illustrates Si's comment about personal takes. I'm often surprised at the very different responses to particular images; we variously see and/or care about different aspects of images. Like everyone else, I think these two are really pleasing.
 
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