I captured these Malaysia lacewing butterflies mating in Bali, Indonesia. It was very important to keep the back of the camera, i.e. the plane of the digital sensor, as parallel as possible with the plane of the butterflies' wings to maintain as much depth of field as possible. I used an aperture of f/11, but with a telephoto lens (100-400mm in this case) that lens opening doesn't provide as much DOF as is necessary. That's why the parallel issue is so important. I didn't want any part of the insects to be out of focus because their colorful detail was so beautiful. I used the burn tool in Photoshop to darken the periphery of the background a little. My other settings were 1/1000 and 6400 ISO. I used a fast shutter because there was a slight breeze and the butterflies weren't perfectly stationary. Again, I tried to do everything possible to get a sharp image.
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