Great Spangled Fritillary

Happy New Year everyone! I'm ringing in 2013 by contracting a cold, so I have not been in much of a writing mood. I've tried to be a little productive, so I've been looking through my old photos to find ones I like and want to use at some point in the future.

I found a photo I originally featured in this post about clover and took it into Adobe Lightroom to fix the color and a few other things.

It's a Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele), a beautiful butterfly that I see pretty often in Ohio. I saw this one outside of Sugar Grove, Ohio in June of 2010, soon after I became interested in macro photography of insects. The butterfly is centered in the photo, sure, but I'm still happy with it. It looks less "hazy" than the original, which is what I was trying to do with it. I'm a bit annoyed at the piece of plant covering the clover flower on the left, but it gives the photo a "natural" look I suppose.

I'm thinking of putting this photo on the back of a post card soon, it's a nice snapshot of Ohio wildlife.