These three Brimstone butterflies were photo'd last week in south east Turkey. I managed to snatch a few hours early morning whilst the sun was low and bright. The upper two yellow butterfly images are the male and the whitish-lime coloured individual is the female.
Butterflies are especially difficult to photograph. They are frustrating in that a number of factors are conspiring against you; The butterfly is usually moving and restless, a slight breeze creates movement and your own arms tire quickly, creating even more tremble. The depth of field needs to be high enough to capture the correct focus but low enough to blurr the background. However, the greater depth of field darkens the image so exposure requires compensating. The list of problems goes on.
This type of image above is my kind of style that I try ro achieve, eg. a focussed subject but with highly blurred and uncluttered background. Not always easy but this is what I try to achieve. Andy Rouse recommends a slight repositioning of the tripod which creates a very different picture in macro mode. I tried the technique last week and guess what, he's right.
EXIF Detail: Aperture priority. F/10. ISO 100. Exposure -0.7EV. Shutter speed 1/160s. WB Cloudy. Focal length 500mm. Distance from subject 2m. Image cropped in Photoshop.
This is the first instalment of some butterfly images taken in the Italian Alps last week. All were taken with the 300mm lens and 1.7x teleconverter.
Although some of these species can be found at lower altitudes, these shots were all taken at approx 3,500 to 4,500 ft above sea level, mainly in the Mottarone area.
The three images above are Swallowtail, with regrettably one tail missing.
Several fritillary species were seen but this one above and below was the only obliging one! The images above and below are that of a Queen of Spain Fritillary (Thanks Dave Parker). This species was quite common with about 20 seen in the local area.
The images below are Clouded Yellow. They were fairly common at this altitude and the shortage of oxygen did not seem to make any difference to their strength of flight. This individual was quite obliging though and allowed close approach to about six feet.
All three images are the same individual in slightly different angles.
Brimstone -quite common and all were particularly tame.
All the images were taken in strong light, at ISO 100, aperture F/8, WB Cloudy, exposure stopped down to minus 0.7 or even -1.0EV. All but the Swallowtail shots were tripod mounted. On the first day I left my tripod behind thinking that the cable car was too cramped for all the gear. I realised by the end of the day that a tripod is essential for best focus!
