To me Photography is like an artist painting if you can produce an image which i would find hard for myself to produce you have my respect. This picture must have been hard to take i know i have tried. Good on you and dont listen too much to the critics, give someone the chance to criticize and they will.

John, Thanks and I agree to a certain extend, but I think it is always worthwhile to strive for improvement. I think I would be bored with the photography hobby if I couldn't improve on it. Forums like these with criticism help me a lot.

fantastic shot, colours and composition are absolutely spot on. I dont aggree with the comments about cropping, rule of thirds and all that, it needs the space around the subject to make it work. wish i'd taken this one!

I find it difficult to criticise this shot, because it's extremely good. However, I like the idea of a horizontal crop - just above the butterfly, and just below it's lowest foot. It somehow seems a bit nicer on the eye when cropped like that, and there is space on the left for the insect to 'look into'.

A polariser might have worked well here, to remove reflections from the wings - that way the transparent parts would have looked truly transparent, and would have appeared 'invisible'. I think this would have made the photo even more intriguing, as people might think the wings hade huge holes in them.

last chance bump

Excellent shot! I wrote an earlier post but as I hadn't logged in first I lost that one!

For me this is an amazing shot as it has everything, lighting, sharpness, DOF and colour are all just about perfect. Well done!

You should submit this shot to stock libraries (try fotolia) IMHO.

This is a beautiful picture.  You have captured this lovely insect in all its glory.  well done to you.  To snap something as good as this would be my idea of heaven.  Thank you