Just to further the topic of compositing, attached is an image (Black Hairstreak) that I created in which I took NONE of the source photographs (credit to Peter Eeles for most of it). The result is obviously a lot different from any one of the original pictures and is greater than the sum of its par...

Paul, I had indeed posted my photos already. One of them features focus stacking and some modest editing to bring the picture more alive and capture how it felt to see the butterfly, in the way that Mike describes. The other two are natural, except that I used a trick I learned that where one antenn...

Thank you Mike - a good summary I think. The implication here I think is that what is acceptable is somewhat subjective, as how everyone perceives a scene (including colours) is subjective. But you describe a good set of principles for where the blurred lines are I'd say

Chris

All seem well-balanced comments to me Paul and interesting stuff, thanks for taking the time to reply. I wouldn’t enter a composite into a competition, but probably would assume that focus stacking and selective editing on was what the others were likely to be doing. Regarding the UKbutterflies comp...

Paul, I would indeed say that some of the competition winners used compositing to some extent, and as you say maybe fairly openly in some cases. But I didn't want to suggest it myself just in case I was underestimating in-camera skills :) I'm assuming a good compositor could make it undetectable, gi...

I'm interested in the current etiquette around compositing photos. I'm learning photoshop just now and as an exercise I made the attached composite, but I'm not sure what are acceptable uses for it. I took the common blue picture, but it was originally on a thistle and I wanted an image with an oran...

Female Common Blue, Scotland.

Autumn Red Admiral

Small Copper, Perthshire, 2nd September 2021.