This is a shot I took back in April of this year while I was on holidays in Belgium. Common wisdom is that centred subjects are a bad thing in photography, and that they lead to boring photos. Because of that I spent a lot of time trying different crops on this image to come up with a shot where the composition is not centred, but in the end, I didn’t like any of the crops and decided to just ignore common wisdom for this shot. I like how the orange butterfly is surrounded by a see of green, and I think the diagonal orientation of the butterfly makes the composition work despite being centred.

The Comma Butterfly (Polygonia c-album) is exceptionally rare in Ireland. I does show up here from time to time in the very extreme south east in Wexford, but those are individuals who migrate over from the the UK if the summer is very good. In Belgium however, these wonderful butterflies are quite common.

Comma Butterfly (Polygonia c-album)
on Flickr – Full-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
  • Exposure: 1/500 sec
  • Focal Length: 200mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/8
  • ISO: 400
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
  • Processing: the exposure, saturation & contrast were selectively tweaked in the butterfly using Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin