Bed Fellows

I just love your series of these beautiful butterflies and flowers. You certainly have your technique perfected.  The soft colours,, OOF areas, and selective sharp detail provide a real elegance and sense of peace.
Exceptional work!

Sandy

Stunning in its simplicity, the way the eye is drawn to the pair of butterflies and the effect of the stem as it fades into the background.   Beautiful!

This is a beautiful and gentle view, Mark.  The colors coordinate very well.  How neat to get two on a single seed head.

A beautifully composed and attractive subject. Not to pick a nit, but the BFs seem a little soft to me, probably from a little motion. I'm wondering if a higher ISO and shorter exposure might have rendered these lovelies a little sharper?

Hi, Phil, not not a nit but actually a rather valid point. For the image itself the overall processing has the effect of slightly reducing overall 'crispness' anyway (very much softening the background structures) however that is not the main effect here.  What you are seeing (good eye ;-) ...) is that neither butterfly was truly in plane with the camera and even with F6.3 the depth of field wasn't enough to capture both properly. That said the bottom wing edge of the top butterfly is crystal sharp but i probably could have placed the overall plane of focus a little better ;-) ... There really was no wind or camera movement ;-) ... In terms of higher ISO i could have gone to ISO 200 but that is the limit for an SD1 Merrill - anything above that is 'emergency use only'. The Foveon Merrill sensor produces wonderful detail (and colour) that is hard to envisage unless you've worked with the files, but, and its a big but, the sensor has to be treated more like film in terms of ISO limitations.  Its a compromise I am more than happy to take since I can do so much with the RAWS that the camera provides. There is a German word to describe how both myself and Ines are about our photography, that is 'Leidenschaft'.  The direct translation is 'passionate' but the word actually has a root with the meaning of 'suffering' - so that the real translation is lost and, of course, is never more relevant than for people who can thing of using no other system than that which contains a Foveon sensor ... :-D ...

A gorgeous composition, Mark.  I really like the way the stem of the flower fades into the bottom of the frame.  Wonderful colors.