“Butterfly Garden on the Beach” By Katie Kimberly is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
“Sand Dune Butterfly” By Katie Kimberly is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Photography has been a passion of mine for years, I unfortunately had to put the camera down during my freshman year of college because I was super busy with school. I had a ton of photographs to choose from and I mean a ton. It was extremely hard to choose which photograph to use for this assignment because I have a ton of photographs and it was a tough decision to make. I tend to take my camera everywhere I travel and capture photographs of subjects or things that stick out to me.
This photograph was captured at Atlantic Beach, Florida near the life guard tower. The sand dunes had wild flowers and plants, but also many butterflies. There were a ton of butterflies flying around the sand dune wild flowers and plants. This specific photograph stuck out to me due the composition, the vibrant colors and the subject of the photograph. There was too much unnecessary empty greenery space in the photograph. I decided that I wanted to have a close up perspective versus farther away, so that you can focus more on the Butterfly rather than the butterfly and greenery. Therefore I cropped out the excess greenery in the background so that the photograph could have a change in perspective and changes the focal point. Then I went back and decided to slightly adjust contrast, brightness and curves. Overall, The cropped version of the photograph plays into the rule of thirds while bringing the butterfly closer to the viewer and making it more apparent that the butterfly is the main subject of the photograph.
Hi Katie,
For this exercise, you cropped one of your original images to emphasize the subject- a butterfly- as the focal point of the image. I can agree with your argument that the original image had a lot of space dedicated to greenery which could distract from the subject. I understand why you chose to tighten the cropping around the butterfly itself. In your new image, the greenery provides solid contrast against the vibrant warm tones of the butterfly itself. The flowers create leading lines to draw the viewer towards your subject, though I think you could have left the flowers uncrossed so the leftmost bulb wasn’t cut off
I think it would be interested to take this further, tightening the cropping until you were extremely close up on the butterfly, approaching macrophotography, leaving the viewer to determine on their own what they were looking at. This would give you an opportunity to use titling to guide the viewer and emphasize the interesting natural color and patterns of your figure. It would definitely change the meaning of the image beyond the intentions you mentioned, however.
Hi Katie!
I absolutely love butterflies. I can appreciate that beautiful natural view in each photo. I also can appreciate the beautiful greenery that surrounds the butterfly and completely understand why you decided to crop as much as you could out.
I think the cropping subtly shifts the story the photo tells. I’m curious to know how the image might look if the butterfly were positioned more towards the left side, perhaps a bit closer for a more detailed view.
Overall, I absolutely love the photo! It’s impressive that you captured it yourself. I would have loved to see a closer-up shot of the butterfly.
Hi Katie! What a beautiful photo and I love that you took it yourself! I agree with you that the original photo was a bit far away and the excess greenery was taking away the importance of the subject. I love how you can see the details of the butterfly better when it is closer, emphasizing the beauty of nature. However, I do not feel that the meaning of the image changed much given the crop. Regardless, the image is lovely! I agree with our other peers that cropping a bit more to the left would’ve left the whole part of the flower which could be highlighted in the photo. Great work!