Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘fleabane’

White Butterfly

I captured this White butterfly on the Shultz Tank trail. A gorgeous but extremely difficult butterfly to photograph. They won’t sit still! Thanks to Tom H for the identity. It’s a Pine White. That’s what I thought but the orange edging confused me. I found out today that the female has orange. Thanks to my Cazba(.org) friends!

 

Thicket Hairstreak

There were lots of Thicket Hairstreak as well as many other tiny butterflies on the wonderful Viet Springs trail last week. Rarely sitting still for long, they’re a challenge to photograph. I applied art filters to disguise the very busy background.

Thanks to Tom H. for the ID.

Fleabane Textured

Fleabane captured at the Flagstaff Arboretum and then grunged up in Photoshop with a few layers of textures. A truly easy process! Here’s a sample of the many free tutorials available on the web: Photoshop Texture Tutorial. If you really enjoy this stuff, you might want to consider taking one of Carol Leigh’s Montage Workshops.

Fleabane

Fleabane (a member of the Aster family) got its name from a reputation of killing or driving away fleas. That’s good to know but the plant is few and far between so since I haven’t seen a flea in almost 17 years, there must be something else here in Arizona they don’t like! (Blended with a couple of textures.)

Open Wide!

As beautiful as wildflowers may be, their backgrounds are typically very distracting. Using a very large aperture can make backgrounds into big blobs of color such as with this tiny Fleabane. It can even make hot spots somewhat pleasing. So next time you capture a flower, open wide! (Canon 70-200 (f/4 non IS) Left image at f/13. Right at f/4)