This week I spent two days in the mountains hiking with my regular camera, getting a lot of good shots. However, earlier in the week, our yard was visited for the first time by a Monarch butterfly. I got out my macro lens with the fast motor drive, but before I did all of that I shot an insurance image with my phone. The iPhone upstaged my fancier photo equipment, my front yard upstaged the Rocky Mountains, and this became my favorite image of the week.

King of the Butterflies
iPhone 11 Pro
Digital Darkroom. For global adjustments, I started by raising the exposure by almost a full stop, and increasing contrast by +26. This gave the flowers too much prominence, so I lowered highlights by -30 to tame the whites. This wasn’t quite enough, so I used a brush to cover everything except the butterfly and dropped highlights by an additional -70. I finished by using a brush on the butterfly to increase exposure by another half a stop and increase clarity by +31.
WIRR stands for Weekly Image Rich Ruh. This regular feature on Das Has von Ruh will show and describe my favorite photo created during this weekly period. My weeks start on Mondays, as does the WIRR. I’m hoping to include commentary on the story, the setting, the specs, or the sentiments, depending on the circumstances.