Gallery 6
The Butterfly Page
What the caterpillar calls the
end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.
From Illusions by Richard Bach
Several years ago my daughter Gretchen took some nice butterfly shots while we all visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in New York. Those photos are now framed and hanging on our Kitchen wall.
For me however, shooting Butterflies was a totally new experience. In fact, all of this sudden interest in Butterfly photography seemed to happen overnight.
First, my friend Glenn sent me a shot of a butterfly that he took while shooting exteriors for a house. Then, my friend Billy showed me a few photos that he and his wife Risa took around their home. All of the many photos taken by Gretchen and my friends were pretty neat, but I'd never shot a single butterfly before now.
Well, one day while I was over at Fairfield Arboretum, my favorite local place for shooting flowers, I happened to notice that the Butterflies seemed to be everywhere. I guess 2006 must have produced a bumper crop.
So, with some of the flowers a little past their prime, I thought I'd try my hand at Butterfly photography.
Never having shot any of the little buggers before, I was clueless as to where to begin or how to go about it. I wasn't even sure if I had the right lenses for the job.
I soon found out that stalking Butterflies in the wild doesn't work. They are too fast and they don't spend much time in one place. By about the time that I'd get the camera up to my eye, focus and then frame the shot, they'd be gone. A better tactic seemed to be to stay in one place and let the Butterflies come to me. So, after awhile, that's exactly what I did. I just sat and waited.
As it turned out, the lens that I brought along to shoot flowers wasn't long enough to work the Butterflies at a comfortable distance for the both of us. So, with a quick round-trip back home, I soon arrived back at the field with the right gear and all jazzed up about Butterflies.
Don't look for any Butterflies in the frame at the left. While I sat and waited for them to accept me as part of the scenery, I passed the time by shooting some Flower arrangements.
Except for the first frame and several more at the end of this page, all of the other Butterfly shots were taken at Fairfield, right here in Howell. For equipment, I used the Canon 30d and the Canon 70-200mm 2.8L IS lens.
Most of the images were taken wide open with the camera set to 400 ASA. Using 400 ASA and a lens aperture of 2.8, meant that the shutter speeds were pretty fast; most times between 1/1200th and 1/5000th of a second.
Shooting with the lens wide open also means that the Depth of Field is very shallow and focusing becomes really critical. A half inch either way and the main subject is out of focus. I especially like the blur in the background of this next shot. The Japanese call the blur "Bokeh".
The next photo has been the favorite so far among my wife Bonnie, my daughter Gretchen and some of my friends. Bonnie said she likes this photo so well that she wants to hang one of the prints in the Bathroom...
I always knew my photos would wind up in the Crapper one day.
The shot below was of a very small Butterfly. He was about the size of my thumbnail but he was pretty cooperative and posed for a good long while.
The two Tiger Swallowtails below were really enjoying those purple flowers. See what I mean about Depth of Field and Critical Focusing. One Butterfly is in focus and the other one is out. In retrospect, I probably should have shot this photo at f4 or 5.6 to help widen out the DOF.
The first photo on this web page and next three shots were all taken in Delaware at the Ashland Butterfly house. Bonnie and I went down there one Saturday morning to check it out.
Bonnie took the first image of a male Monarch butterfly with the Canon 10d and a 24-85 lens. It's a great shot and aside from some slight cropping it needed no other fixing.
All three Butterflies in the next frame are pretty sharply focused even though it was a cloudy overcast day and the DOF was pretty narrow.
One of the neat things to discover about Butterflies is that the underside of their wings can have different colors than the top side. Who knew? Checkout the male Spicebush Swallowtails, on either side of the frame below.
Ashland, is a very small place and although we had a nice time it's not really worth a second 2.5 hour trip from Central New Jersey. Nonetheless, Bonnie and I did manage to get a few nice frames.
Just when I thought that the Butterfly shooting season was pretty much over for this year, my friend Billy told me about a new place to go that's right near home. It's the Butterfly Garden at Cattus Island Park just north of Tom's River, New Jersey. The next few shots were all taken there.
Cattus Island is part of the Ocean County Park system and it's only about 20 minutes away. So, one rainy Sunday afternoon, Bonnie and I ventured down that way to have a look.
When we first arrived on site at Cattus we thought that there wasn't much to see. The Butterfly Garden was about 30 feet square and not enclosed like Delaware's Butterfly house.
Looking around, there wasn't a butterfly in sight and the few birds who were there when we first arrived, quickly flew away.
But with time and patience, we were rewarded with some flying activity and as a result we got quite a few nice images. I especially like these two verticals of male Monarchs.
The shot on the right, just has the best coloring.
This next shot was cropped from a larger frame because the 200mm lens that I was using was just not close enough to get a tight image.
Well, about an hour and 200 frames after we arrived at Cattus, Bonnie and I were pretty satisfied with the shooting and thought we'd head towards home. Then, as we picked up our jackets to leave a pair of Goldfinches came flying in and landed about 20 feet away. The male was very nervous and watched our every move. The female landed nearer the ground and was pretty much out of sight. So, without trying to draw too much attention, we moved in as close as we dared and started shooting again.
I could have gotten much closer to this Goldfinch, but I thought he would probably fly away if I did. So again, this shot was cropped from a much wider frame. The image was taken wide open with the 30d and the Canon 70-200 mm f 2.8 IS. The finch is still relatively sharp even though the DOF was pretty shallow.
This was the only image where his head was totally above the flowers. As you can tell, he's watching us pretty closely. A few moments after making this image, both finches flew away.
Bonnie shot the final frame for this web page.
Here I am with my new "Best Friend" in Delaware. We're both checking each other out. This little guy was very tame and kept landing on both Bonnie and I. At one point he attached himself to the back of Bonnie's shirt and could have escaped as we started to leave. But we foiled his plans for freedom by putting him back into the enclosed Butterfly house.
I'll spare you the frames that Bonnie took after I put him on the tip of my nose. Yes, it tickled.
So, shooting butterflies may be a new thing for me. They certainly are colorful and they always seem to land on pretty flowers.
When I was starting to label the photo files for this web page I came to the realization that as a result of sleeping through Mr. Kingman's Earth Science classes in high school, I knew absolutely nothing at all about Butterflies.
Well, in an effort to make up for past transgressions, I bought several books on the subject and I've been reading a lot. I don't expect to become an expert, but it is nice to know a little more about what I'm shooting. Hopefully, the Butterflies I've named, I've done so correctly?
One final word about the background wallpaper for this page... Yes, I used a shot of a real Butterfly to create it. In fact, I probably spent more time making the background, than it took me to create the whole rest of the page! The original image was of a male "Atlantis Fritillary" (yes, a little knowledge is a scary thing) and it was shot at the Butterfly house in Delaware.
Hope you had fun!
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