Butterfly on Flower

Butterfly on Flower

One of my favorite poses for flowers is the head-on pose, where you can see their "face" in great detail. This photo is a good example of why I like this pose - you can see details that you wouldn't be able to with the naked eye.

What do I like about this photo? The pose, obviously. The huge amount of details (do enlarge). The sun is behind the butterfly, and the background is dark enough, so both the butterfly and the flower are shining with light. Whenever you can arrange for the light (preferably sunlight) to come from the back and the background to be dark the results are guaranteed to be magical. I used an open aperture to create a shallow depth of field, so the butterfly (and the flower) are sharp, but the background is blurred out. This makes the butterfly and the flower really stand out.

What would I want to improve? The wings of the butterfly are not very sharp. Perhaps closing down the aperture a little would have created more depth of field and gotten them into focus as well (although that would have been at the expense of some of the blurriness of the background).