Butterfly Photo Project

Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)

I've been subjecting my Facebook friends to a stream of butterfly photos all summer long. It's part of a project that I started last spring. I'm sometimes called upon to give talks for various community groups. A particularly well-worn presentation is one titled Butterflies of the American Prairie. I've been giving variants on this talk for many years. It's still in 35 mm slide format. Many of the images are quite old, and very few of them are actually my own photos. This year I decided to change that by upgrading the whole talk to a PowerPoint presentations using fresh photos that I have taken myself.

Karner Blue (Lycaeides melissa samuelis)

As I got into this project, I realized that I had a few good images from last year, such as this Karner Blue from northwest Indiana. This photo is what got me thinking about my project.

Hoary Elfin (Callophrys polios)

I began way back in April. My goal was to get all of the images that I will need to create a digital version of my talk. This Hoary Elfin was photographed on April 30 at Illinois Beach State Park. This is a very rare species in Illinois, and flies for just a few weeks in late April and early May.

Buckeye (Junonia coenia)

As the summer progressed, I was able to collect more and more images. Sometimes I went out specifically to take photos. Field work also offered some good opportunities. I spent a lot of time this summer doing butterfly surveys for one of the large Cook County agencies. They wanted me to take lots of photos, and I obliged. Some of them turned out to be useful for my project.

Eastern Tailed Blue (Everes comyntas)

My conservation work has allowed my additional photo opportunities. Sometimes I'm taking pictures of the species that we are working with, as is the case with this Regal Fritillary picture.

Regal Fritillary (Speyeria idalia)

Other times I found opportunities to snag shots of species that we aren't working with in the lab. That was the case for this Little Yellow, which we found while collecting Regal Fritillary moms for egg laying.

Little Yellow (Eurema lisa)

It's been a rewarding effort. I tried to do a lot more butterfly photography a decade ago. My parents had given me a very nice camera for my fortieth birthday. I always felt butterfly photography to be a struggle. My macro lens was amazing, but I had to get right on top of an individual butterfly if I wanted to use the lens' capability. Butterflies typically do not cooperate with that behavior.Depth of field was always a huge issue for me. The greater flexibility that the digital format offers has really liberated me, and I'm enjoying the photographic opportunities that are opening up.

Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phileus)

The season is rapidly ending, however the project isn't done yet. I now have enough images that I can put together a digital version of the talk. There are a bunch of species that I need, and still others that I'm not yet fully pleased with. I'm very fortunate that I started this project during an extremely good year for butterflies, and look forward to filling in many of my gaps in 2011.

Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)

One the Use of Patience as a Tool to Recover From Stupidity

Last Tuesday was my last full day in Colorado. John and I were planning to check out some higher elevation terrain northwest of Boulder. About a half hour into the drive, I realized that I had left my camera on John’s dining room table. I muttered bad words under my breath and felt really, really stupid.

It was a good collecting day. I got a nice snowberry sphinx moth as we began getting into the high country. Our initial destination proved to be a bust. The aspen trees were not even beginning to leaf out yet, and there was still snow on the ground. We wandered to lower elevation, and found an interesting looking spot at the St. Vrain Trailhead. It was crowded. There were lots of dogs. The trail wound through several campsites. But the calypso orchids were in bloom- a species I’d never seen before. Unfortunately, we had no camera. We both took some really bad shots with our cell phones. On the way out, we ran into a bunch of green-margined tiger beetles. We each got a nice series. They were even approachable- but as we had no camera, I got no photos.

The next day, John decided to forgo collecting. I was not leaving until 6 in the evening. It occurred to me that I could go back to the St. Vrain Trail and take some of the photos that I had missed due to my stupid move the day before. It was a chillier day, and as I drove up to Boulder, it started getting cloudier. And cloudier. And even cloudier. K-Country 99 was predicting clouds with rain by early afternoon.

By the time I started up into the foothills it was raining lightly and I was cursing myself. I had forgotten my camera on the last good photography day of the trip! Should I try to drive back onto the plains in the hopes for more sun? I decided just let it go and be a bit more patient with myself and the situation. I would continue with my plans in the knowledge that I would at least be able to get photos of the orchids.

Calypso Orchid

The rain had stopped by the time I got out of the car, and the flat light actually made photographing the orchids a bit easier. I decided that I’d just take a nice hike and photograph flowers along the way. As I got further in, I realized that by walking just a bit further up the trail than I had the day before, the campsites stopped and the scenery got much nicer.

Prettier forest- though somewhat somber

Bearberry

The plant life was pretty cool. I saw a whole bunch of a parasitic plant called pine drops. They were just sprouting and made for some interesting photography. I was especially surprised to find a pretty blue clematis in bloom. Despite being unhappy with the fact that I would surely miss out on photographing the new (for me) species of tiger beetle, I was in beautiful surroundings and having a very nice time.

Pine Drops

Blue Clematis

Maybe it was the blue of the clematis that did it, but just about the time that I snapped that photo, a patch of blue sky scudded overhead. I pushed onward, happy that it wasn’t going to rain on me. Then there was another patch of blue, and another. I noticed that there was clear sky approaching from the southwest. Realizing that I might have a shot at insect photography after all, I turned around and headed back towards the trailhead. Twenty minutes after I was the first bit of blue sky, I was standing in the Colorado forest in the middle of a beautiful sunny day. The woods looked even better on my walk out. The rest of the afternoon was beautifully sunny.

Cicindela limbalis habitat. They were crawling on the bare rock.
Note the complete lack of clouds in the sky here.

Patience. It’s the key to photography.

Green-margined Tiger beetle (Cicindela limbalis)