Photobombed by a Butterfly

This was intended to be a picture of a Say’s Phoebe on a slightly rusty fire pit grate. That part of the shot turned out pretty much as intended. But then when I got home and loaded my images in Lightroom, I noticed that one of my frames had this black butterfly (probably a Pipevine Swallowtail) just to the right of the bird.

What’s most cool is that it is on exactly the right plane where part of its body is in focus … enough that you can tell what it is, as opposed to just an amorphous blue blob.

This got me thinking …

How often are some of our favorite shots, if not total, at least partial accidents that we many times aren’t even aware of until we get home and see the image on a big computer screen?

Of course I’m not complaining. I’m always happy to be able to capture and edit a cool shot that I might be able to share.

But I suspect that I’m not the only photographer who has this type of thing happen more often than we might be comfortable to admit in public.

… not that the originally intended shot wasn’t interesting enough on its own.

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Your Turn:

If you captured an image like this, would you be tempted to take credit for it? Or would you just admit it was a happy accident?

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Til next time,

Todd

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