Description

Beautiful butterfly close up macro photography artwork taken at the Butterfly World garden in Coconut Creek, Florida.



A couple of weeks ago we visited Delray Beach in Southeast Florida. My family from Germany was visiting and we joined them for a week at the beautiful Parliament Inn. We had a wonderful time and it was great catching up on things and just hanging out together. While everyone decided to take a speed boat ride in Miami I decided to opt for a photo trip to the nearby Butterfly World in Coconut Creek. The butterfly garden was an amazing experience; what a great place to escape to with a camera. To see butterflies of every type and color flattering around the beautiful aviary was simply a joy. I spent about 3 hours pursuing macro photography. I first started out using my macro lens but ran into limitations of composing images and creating frame filling butterfly photos since the butterflies took off when I got too close. The 70-200mm lens came in handier and adding a 1.4x teleconverter made it a more pleasant photo experience at up to 420 mm focal length. In order to compensate for the longer lens and its slower shutter speeds adjusting the ISO setting to 200 was a must. A large aperture setting (small f/stop) not only supported faster shutter speeds but also created a shallower Depth of Field which is mostly desired when photographing wildlife, birds or bugs. Unfortunately Butterfly World does not allow the use of tripods or monopods. Kathy, a knowledgeable and most friendly worker at Butterfly World, pointed out to me that the watering system is very delicate and in earlier years when photographers were allowed to bring in tripods they broke a lot of water system piping by setting up tripods behind the railing. Hence, tripods and monopods were forbidden at one point.

In the first butterfly picture the Birdwing Butterfly was beautifully hanging off a little shrub branch. Isolating and composing the subject on the branch against a calming background was my highest priority. I therefore placed the butterfly in front of another bush that was probably 3 or 4 yards away and set a large aperture (small f-stop) of f/4.0 to obtain a sharp image of the butterfly with the calming backdrop in blur. An exposure time of 1/200 sec barely allowed me to hand-hold the camera.



From Wikipedia: A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea). All the many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. The earliest known butterfly fossils date to the mid Eocene epoch, between 40 to 50 million years ago.



Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some, like the Monarch, will migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Some species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees; however, some species are agents of pollination of some plants, and caterpillars of a few butterflies (e.g., Harvesters) eat harmful insects. Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.