Every now and then I take a photograph and I am not really sure how I achieved the effect in the shot, like this one of a Fiery Skipper butterfly (Hylephila phyleus) on a jagged leaf.
With the exception of a few minor adjustments of the RAW image and a tiny bit of cropping, this looks just like the image I started with. When I first examined the image, I was pretty sure that I had used flash, but the EXIF data indicate that flash was not used. I took the shot handheld at ISO 400, f/6.3, and 1/500 sec. The depth of field was pretty shallow, but I did get the eye pretty much in focus, and I like the way the sharpness falls off so quickly.
I especially like the blurry jagged back edge of the leaf and the sharper near edge. The triangular shape of the wings seems to mirror those jags. Even the butterfly’s pose seems to work well, with the one leg dangling over the edge. If you click on the image, you get a higher resolution view of the photo.
I think that this is a Fiery Skipper, though I confess that I am not very good at identifying these little butterflies. Let me know if you can help in further identifying the butterfly.
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Mike Powell 
Awesome shot.
Thanks, Seth.
Nice work aligning the eye with the front of the leaf to get that wonderful effect:)
Thanks, Lyle. There is not much latitude for error with a macro lens this close up and I was happy to get the focus just where i wanted it. I think that things just happened to line up well, with the butterfly’s eye and legs on the same plane as the edge of the leaf.
It does look like you used a flash. That’s a pretty butterfly!
I think the shadows were so deep that they caused the background to go so black, especially because I have a tendency to underexpose my images.
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