-- Jan van Bodegraven (janvnbdg@mandic.com.br), June 11, 1999

Answers

A beautiful butterfly and image. Only quirp is that a tiny more DOF would have helped.

-- Tait Stangl (taits@usa.net), June 11, 1999.

I find the foreground a bit odd, being out of focus and all. But, this is probably hard to fix in such a shot. The only suggestion I would make is to rotate the image 90 degrees. I think that would be "easier" to look at. The eye tends to be centered towards it. But, very nice with either rotation.

-- Chris Gillis (cagillis@concentric.net), June 11, 1999.

Hmmm..... I like the oreintation and believe rotating at 90 degrees would degrade the impact of the image. The lack of DOF in the foreground is unfortunate, but it is still a great shot. Good job of finding and photographing a beautiful subject.

-- Chris Hawkins (peace@clover.net), June 12, 1999.

I agree that a little more DOF would help, but only to the extent of getting the club ends of the antenna in focus. The foreground mossy rock (or whatever) being out of focus doesn't bother me at all -- that's often impossible to avoid, and it isn't distracting to my eye, and many many published wildlife shots look like that.

I strongly disagree with the comment on rotating the image, assuming that this orientation is what you actually saw. Would you rotate it if it were a picture of a person, or a dog, or any other object/animal that people are very familiar with? Of course not, unless you were trying to achieve some specific fine-arts effect. As a picture of nature, I think it needs to be in its natural orientation or it is a "trick shot" and should be labeled as such.

But anyway, it's a lovely, well-captured butterfly. I've seen these transparent-winged butterflies in the tropics and am always delighted with them. You've captured the transparency well (with the abdomen showing through) with an excellent exposure on the body and wings. Great job!

-- John Sullivan (sullivan@spies.com), June 14, 1999.

Thanks for all your responses.

Taken early in the morning. At f/16 the exposure was several seconds + Fill flash. Magnification was close to life size, my little dof table tells me the depth of field is less than 2 mm on either site of the plane of sharp focus....

-- Jan van Bodegraven (janvnbdg@mandic.com.br), June 14, 1999.

I bet the minor DOF problem on the antenna ends goes unnoticed when the original is projected or viewed on a light box - at least by mortals as opposed to photonetians. It looks like most of the important stuff is in focus - eyes, mouth parts (what do they call those things) and most of all those fantastic wings. There's a photograph of a similar butterfly on the back of Natural History this month. It's always hard to tell from a computer presentation, but I bet the original is every bit as good as the one in Natural History! Congratulations on a fine photograph. I wish I were there.

-- Pete Dickson (dickson.pn@pg.com), June 15, 1999.

Proboscis, i guess.

-- Jan van Bodegraven (janvnbdg@mandic.com.br), June 15, 1999.

This, to my eye, is an excellent butterfly shot. The parts that matter are sharp. The wings, including the transparent sections, are phenomenal (and new to me). The orientation is just as it should be. A wonderful image!

-- Garry Schaefer (schaefer@pangea.ca), June 15, 1999.

This is a stunning photo. A very nice rendition of a beautiful, and I tend to think difficult to shoot, butterfly. I think the color, dof and composition are all more than acceptable for any publication. Is this butterfly related to the family of "clearwings"? Do you have any biological information on them? Looking forward to seeing more posts! Donna

-- Donna P. Bollenbach (cassidy@icubed.net), June 16, 1999.

Very Nice! Transparent wings on BF are new to me also.

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), June 18, 1999.

Hi, I am coming along a bit late but just found this very enjoyable forum a few days ago and wanted to give a bit of info on the subject.

A very nice shot of a member of the family Ithomiidae (sometimes considered a subfamily of the large family Nymphaliidae), found in Central and South America. There are many very similar species and even similar genera, and this group isn't my specialty so I'm not able to give an exact ID. The members of this family are toxic to predators, and I believe their larval foodplant is Heliotrope. Like many other tropical groups, many of the species form mimicry rings, i.e. related and unrelated species that resemble certain toxic species for mutual protection. One can find a group flying around a bush, all similar in pattern and even manner of flight, but upon examining them in detail, the group can consist of 6 or more different butterfly species and sometimes even a moth or two!

Regards, Danny

-- Danny Burk (foto28@aol.com), July 29, 1999.