Butterfly shot

See the full size here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/erica_marshall/489021262/

I got home last night and I've been itching to get out and do some "real" photography, but time hasn't really allowed it, so I grabbed the camera and decided to try to make do with whatever might be available. Our lilac tree is in full bloom, so I headed towards it to see if there might be a new angle or something interesting to catch out there. I didn't find much.

I poked around a pine tree on the other side of the yard that is showing signs of a yellow-bellied sap sucker using it for food, but so far I haven't gotten a glimpse at the bird, just the holes it leaves behind in the tree. :-(

After taking a couple of photos of pine cones, I headed back towards the lilacs, and began playing with angles and light as the sun was getting lower and lower in the sky. All of a sudden, something flittered around my head. I looked up and saw a butterfly. It was so windy, though, that the poor thing couldn't stay on a bunch of lilacs for very long without getting blown off. Whenever he picked a spot that was low enough, I'd start taking pics. Many came out dark because the area was in shadow and the sun was low (it was probably an hour until sunset).

To brighten up the shot, I set the exposure compensation at +1, and chased the butterflies around some more. -There were actually 2, and they were different varieties, but I never got a usable photo of the 2nd one.

Finally the wind died down a bit and this guy was able to stay on a single, low, flower bunch for a little bit. I lined up the shot and found myself shooting into the sun. It was okay, though, I liked the effect, and with the exposure compensation, I figured he'd come out exposed fairly well. -I was right!

I did nothing to the shot in post-processing except a very slight (1/2 the default) unsharp mask in Gimp. No cropping was done, although some people on my photography list have suggested a crop. I like it as-is, though.

After uploading it I noticed that the shutter speed was 1/50, which means it's amazing it came out as sharp as it did since it was taken with a 100mm lens, and the rule is that anything below one over the focal length (1/100th of a second in this case) is too slow to hand-hold, and I hand-held this shot! Oh well, I like breaking the rules...