Nine frames Later

[robski]

As the Boss only had half a day work for me and the sun had made an appearance this afternoon I thought I would take advantage to track down some small copper butterflies near to home. To my surprise I did spot one in the field (normally I’m lucky to get one or two sightings a year) but alas another flew overhead and it was off. After some fancy aerobatics I managed to lose track of them as they mingled with other flying insects. I hung around for 10 minutes or so but unable to get another sighting.

Next best thing was to focus on the small common blue butterflies which are plentiful at the moment. A female with open wings caught my attention. As I took the shot I noticed it was getting excessive exposure. Did I break my golden rule of not resetting the camera back to my default shooting conditions or was it the dreaded camera bag catching the mode switch and putting it into my last manual mode with a very slow shutter speed. Drat and double drat. By the time I had corrected the camera the butterfly had moved on.

It had settled in a clump of long grass on the edge of the field. I set up my tripod and cleared a few grass stems to line up on the butterfly and take the first shot (attached). Once in a while you can get the ideal shot on the first take, other times you have to work at it.
This shot presented a number of problems and thankfully the beast had settled for the evening to allow me to take a further 8 shots and make some adjustments.

The wind gusts were strong and blowing grass stems into view. I had to do a lot of gardening of the grass stems to tidy up the background, prevent the stems casting shadows (sun low in the sky) on the butterfly. I reposition the tripod to get more of the subject in focus. The last few shots were to ensure at least one was in perfect focus as the wind gusts were blowing the subject in all directions by 2 to 3 inches (fingers crossed that it did not take flight). Just waiting for the wind to drop for those precious few seconds to refocus and shoot.

The final image is about a 10% crop of the full frame. To give you some idea of the size of these little guys the wing in the image is about 12mm or 1/2 inch. The lens used is my 300mm f4 which will focus down to 1.5m (5 feet) giving an image size on the sensor of 1/4 life size.

[yelvertoft]

Impressive stuff Rob. Thanks for the discussion. The point that comes across to me is that it's as much about fieldcraft as it is about photography. Both skills take patience.

[Don Hoey]

Good one Rob.

Makes a nice change to hear the story behind a shot. Gives some idea of the effort that went into making it.

WIND ....... don't mention the wind. Its been either wind or rain here, and a fair few of the plants we put in to attract the nectar lovers have taken a beating.

Don