Meadow Brown

ISO400, 105mm, 1/320s, f/5.6, -1ev, cropped, noise reduction

On a lunch-break when every butterfly seemed too busy to pause for a portrait, this Meadow Brown was the only one whose curiosity/fear overcame it's compulsion to take flight. Very nice patterning on its lower wings, and nicely up-lit by the natural leaf reflector, if a little bit green. (shot with Sunlight pre-set white balance - as always)

Cropped square to make the most of the luscious green surroundings

and simplify the frame.

With hindsight maybe a couple more clicks of aperture, but its possible the background bokeh would have suffered for it. The tilt on the photo I decided at the time was to point the end of the leaf into the bottom right corner (taken portrait orientation), but I decided against that format in post-production and maybe for this format a more anti-clockwise angle would have been more favourable, but again I quite like it - sometimes it's nice to have something tilted the "wrong" way - even if it was by accident.

Hope everyone has a photogenic weekend. If it ends up raining alot you might even see a lesser-spotted MWT weekend blog post! - Mark