Magic Wings Butterfly House

I have enjoyed several visits to the Magic Wings Butterfly House at the Museum of Life + Science in Durham, NC. March 23 was special because I went there on an outing with the Carolinas Nature Photographers' Association. We were given access before the facility was opened for the public that day, which meant good opportunities to quietly stalk these creatures.

While I waited for the front element of my camera lens to defog (the butterfly house is kept at about 80ºF/27ºC year round, and fairly humid, while outside that morning it was cold, not much above freezing), I spotted a cooperative poser on a photogenic perch.

The dew hanging from this flower caught and magnified the images of leaves around it.

Recliner? Reclining Maja?

Reclining Magenta?

When I'm surrounded by colorful butterflies and flowering plants, I'm not usually "thinking in black and white", but I could hardly keep myself from imagining these leaves in a monochrome rendering, so that's where I went with this one.

This succulent is an unusual shade of blue-green.

A sudden flurry of motion caught my attention:

She lit on a joint of my tripod leg.

Here's an overview, the widest view I could get with the lens on my other camera.

She paused on the camera body.

I swapped cameras so that I could hand hold the shorter lens and locked the big rig on the tripod. That's when it became clear that my friend was female. She laid a few eggs (yellow spheres) on the lens hood among other places.

[all photos EF 100/2.8 L IS macro or 70-200/2.8 L IS II + Extender 2X III]

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2014/03/magic-wings-butterfly-house.html

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Butterflies in Flight, Milkweed Runway

Asclepias is the genus of milkweed plants. This clump formed a busy runway for butterflies yesterday afternoon. For a minute or so, the landings were more frequent than at O'Hare and Heathrow combined.

All images shot with 300mm, at or near f/2.8, 1/2000 sec.

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Olla podrida

Two of one plus two of another, plus one of those imitating the other. This is just an olio of the things I found in a period of six and a half minutes (ah, the uses of Exif) within a dozen paces of our mail box at about noon today.

First, two insects, a bee and a butterfly.

Next, two flowers. Remember, noon is supposed to be the worst time of day for photographic light. It ain't necessarily so!

And finally, a camera-shy dragonfly, which hid its body behind a car antenna. The two joined so well that it looks like an insect-flower hybrid. The plaited rubber stalks climb, vine-like, toward the sky...where the Giant awaits Jack?

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2013/07/olla-podrida.html

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Close Encounters of the Insectoid Kind

Sometimes watching a single bed of wildflowers for a short while can make me feel as if I'm in Grand Central Station. In my latest session at knee level, I spotted a color-coordinated visitor.

The bees really like the onion blossoms. They move constantly, so a fast shutter speed is necessary to stop the action. (All of these photos were done with just the existing daylight, no flash, no reflectors.)

Flies visited the same flower patch at the same time. This is, I think, a bottle fly.

The butterfly landed first, and I was photographing it when the bee landed. I expected the butterfly to leave, but it stayed pretty much in one place while the bee wandered around. I was hoping I could catch a close encounter like this, and managed it at last. Note the considerable load of pollen on the bee's leg. I laughed when I enlarged this shot on the computer monitor and noticed how the butterfly's curled tongue had formed a smiley face against the yellow anther behind it.

Okay, that's enough sharing my space - ciao! Butterfly in flight!

"Quickly as you can, snatch the pebble pollen from my hand!" (Kung Fu TV show reference, for those old enough to notice.)

Some closer views of the bottle fly.

And I stood up for an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (which may have been attacked, judging by the damage to its tail). It seemed to be doing fine, and was certainly still beautiful against the trees and sky.

I've learned that even if I only have twenty or thirty minutes to spare, I can get in some good lens practice, and even learn a little bit about the creatures which surround me. I've always been inclined to notice them, but I can see so much more with the aid of a camera!

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2012/09/close-encounters-of-insectoid-kind.html

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BIF - bird in flight, butterfly in flight

The bird in flight in this photo is just an embellishment that happened to fly by as I was shooting what I envisioned as an abstract set of shapes and colors. I was eager to grab the shot while the one was perched on the corner of the building's roof, but didn't see the flier until it entered the frame. There was no time to raise the shutter speed to freeze the movement. I simply tripped the shutter in reaction to what I saw. The blur of motion works, I think, as a contrast to the solid structures behind and below it.

(By the way, believe it or not, there is also a dragonfly in flight, clearly visible in the original full-size photo, to the left of the flying bird and below the perched one! It looks like a dust spot when the size is reduced for the web.)

This butterfly made a brief visit to some nearly dead flowers in our driveway. I had no chance to train the lens on it while it perched, so I tried to catch it in flight. I fired off just two frames, but the second one was successful in showing off the wings and antennae. Yay! It never hurts to try. One of the marvelous things about digital photography is how quickly we can find out whether we've had any success with things that move too quickly for our eyes to be sure what we've caught. Those of you who grew up in the dark ages of film and chemical development will certainly understand why I value this and try not to take it for granted.

Aside from flying creatures, one thing that these two images have in common is that they were shot with the same lens, a 100 mm macro. This is a lens specially designed to focus very close and allow large images of small objects with great detail rendition. It can also be used for portraits, though, and the little architecture/bird/sky abstract above was shot during a brief break amid portrait shooting.

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2012/08/bif-bird-in-flight-butterfly-in-flight.html

Jess Isaiah Levin

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Did one follow me home?

Sometimes a treat lands almost on our doorstep. Having enjoyed (here and here) a visit to the butterfly house at the Museum of Life and Science, I looked out in the porch two days later and saw a perfect specimen that was spreading its wings on the tiles. I ran for my macro lens, then slowly approached. It allowed a few shots before flying off, but then it landed on a boxwood bush. I was able to cautiously approach again, and managed  this shot. Good luck favors the prepared camera!

At this close range/magnification, even a small lens aperture (f/11 in this case) yields very shallow depth of field, so I had to time the shot to the movement of its wings, so that most of the butterfly would be in sharp focus. Because the light was very dim, a high ISO sensitivity was needed to allow a reasonably fast shutter speed. I could not have made this photo in the years that I was shooting film, and indeed its technical quality is largely dependent on the characteristics of recent model DSLR cameras. It still requires some thought and practice, though.

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2012/08/did-one-follow-me-home.html
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More butterflies, and a big bird

At the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC, mentioned in my last post, there is a terrific butterfly house, where tropical species live, breed, and roam freely. There is also one family of birds which are not a threat to the butterflies. I photographed many of them yesterday, and have a few to show here now. First is the Paper Kite (Idea leuconoe, from Southeast Asia). It think it may be the very one that I pictured emerging in the previous post.

Here's a section of the same shot to show you the details of the head ("facial features", to anthropomorphize).

This adult bird (maybe a variety of Guinea Fowl? Sorry, I need to research this!) ran through the underbrush with two young in tow. I barely had time for this one shot, which is not artistic but should be good for an ID.

A pair of owl butterflies (Caligo memnon, Central and South America) posed in proximity.

Here's a Postman (Heliconius erato):

I'm not sure what the next bunch are. I hope to get back to the site soon to find out. If you know any of them, please leave a comment below! I would make a terrible field lepidopterist, but I love to photograph them.

The top and bottom of this species (pics above and below) are equally fascinating!

Finally, and I think fittingly as an homage to the Curiosity mission to Mars, I photographed a relic of a much earlier part of our space program. This is one of the first boosters used to launch sub-orbital flights. Astronaut Alan Shepard rode atop one in the Mercury Capsule, May 5, 1961. The later orbital flights used a two-stage Atlas rocket.

Although North Carolina famously has a lot of red clay, this is, as far as I know, the only location in the state that has a true Redstone, i.e., a Redstone rocket!

To get the perspective I wanted, I shot with a 15 mm fisheye lens. I positioned things in the frame ("aiming" the rocket) in a way that minimized the curvature of straight lines, but showed the actual curves of the fins and got in some of the sweep of clouds in the sky. Unlike a "normal" (rectilinear) lens, this fisheye curves straight lines in order to get in a 180º angle of view across the diagonal limits of the frame. However, lines that intersect the center of the lens axis - that is, lines radiating from the center of the picture - remain straight.

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2012/08/more-butterflies-and-big-bird.html
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