kevinkk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:40 am A lot of shiny butterflies that don't need image manipulation. I agree the subject specimen looks fake. That is it is a fake photo of a real insect,
It's just like the way people are manipulated in advertising in one respect, A little vasaline on the lens and mood lighting, and you're a model.
Fake is fake and if it's fake, there's no other way to look at it, it's an impossibility and just like repro art has little value other than eye candy,
I think the natural world does well enough without being manipulated. I recall there were some hi-res images posted some time back that were
some kind of layering , if I recall that correctly, those images are/were in a different class deserving some merit.
Although- I suppose your model doesn't always cooperate, I tried a few times this last season to get some of those great shots, and just before
closing in, the butterfly decided to fly off, hey! I just want a picture. Next time you'll come home in a jar and then we'll see.
I don't think this is a clear-cut fake photo. It looks a lot like a bug that is lapping up putrid fish juice off a leaf - like the 20 or so other photos of the species on Luis M. Constantin's Flickr page - https://www.flickr.com/photos/140413390@N06/ . That said - it is posed in an odd position - almost as if it were spread. But Anaeini flash this pose regularly - albeit very quickly - as they walk around and I've seen it many times on the sides of traps. It takes a lucky shot to catch them in the millisecond that are flattened out. Take a look at the proboscis and the antennae - which are definitely on a live bug.
That said - I do think the colors in the photo are manipulated to increase saturation. First - it looks like the photo is either in direct bright sunlight or taken with an offset flash. The yellow seems too warm - almost orange, and the blue is almost purple. The over exposure of the HWs is due to the intense iridescence from sun or flash - and if you have never been to the tropics, it's amazing how iridescent bugs can be in direct tropical sun.
John