Glowy White Butterfly

Haha!!! *dances around* I finally got it! And better than I even expected!

I've been trying for this shot for about two weeks now. There are a couple of patches of these purple flowers in the gardens that the white butterflies LOVE (along with moths, bees, and anything else that flies), so I've been stalking them, squatting down with the camera on super macro and just lying in wait for a few of them to come along. But once they land on the flowers, they're so busy moving from bud to bud around the plant that I can hardly follow them and get the camera focused in time for a picture, and they're so shy that if I so much as move the camera too quickly they're gone. I've managed to get a lot of shots, some of them great and clear, but none that had it. Until this one, this afternoon--the only shot I was able to get today, and the sun was already behind the trees so I wasn't sure I'd be able to get anything remotely decent and I almost didn't bother. Glad I did!

I tried something new with the border--probably the most minimalistic I've done, since you can hardly see that gray line. But I knew I needed to emphasize the black background, and I didn't want to diminish the brightness of the butterfly with a white line in the border, so there you go.

Enjoy!