I took the original reference photograph for “Painted Lady” in my mother’s garden. This is actually a Painted Lady butterfly so painting it seemed like the natural thing to do! I did take a few liberties with the color.

This image generated an interesting discussion with a fellow image competitor about the number of painted images in PPA’s competitions. I compete in both the Photographic and Artist competitions but this particular image was entered in the Nature/Wildlife category in Photographic. The original image was certainly nothing to get excited about - I used it because there was good detail and I liked the composition. There was no doubt I would need to paint it because of the amount of noise on the original. The final image, I believe, greatly improves upon the original. (see the video)

While I earned the exhibition merits for my Master of Photography degree exclusively with photographed portraits of animals, I have been playing around and entering more of my painted images in competition. That is, essentially, my business. I take not-so-good client images and transform them into art. For this competition, they’re just my mediocre images instead.

But does it really belong in the “photographic” part of the competition? If the photographic competition is a test of our photographic skills (and yes, I believe that includes post-processing), does an image this far removed from a very lackluster beginning perhaps belong in the Artist competition?

There is certainly nothing in the rules that precludes this being entered in photographic open. But I think I will be making a conscious decision to submit these types of images to the Artist competition in the future and to continue improving my actual photographic skills for the Photographic competition.

Competition controversy aside, please enjoy this image!