Peek-a-Boo

As I mentioned yesterday, next to the Indianapolis Zoo is White River Gardens, a formal garden with a seasonal butterfly exhibit.

The butterflies are pretty conditioned to people being around, so they’re not as skittish as butterflies typically are in the wild. This little guy was resting comfortably on a leaf, presenting a head-on image, which I don’t get to see too often. The picture would be better with less foliage in the way, but if I had tried to move any of the leaves, the butterfly would have taken off.

Piano Key Butterfly

This next butterfly is a piano key butterfly, named that way because of the black and white on the tips of its wings. Having the wings extended gives the best view of the colors and intricacies in the butterfly’s wings – sometimes hard to get as a butterfly at rest often has its wings folded up.

The wing tips are a little out of focus, which is the result of using a long telephoto (300 mm) with a relatively large aperture (f/6.3, 1/125 second) and no tripod. This combination provides very little depth of field, and slight body movement while taking the photo introduces some focus error that a tripod would take care of (of course, the butterfly may not wait around for you to get everything set up!).

Butterfly on a Perch

This last photo is the one I like the best, because there’s nothing to distract from the butterfly and the single leaf that it’s perched on. This was also taken at 300 mm (f/6.3, 1/40 second), but was positioned such that there was no foliage in the immediate vicinity of the butterfly.

The entire focus is on the leaf coming out of the lower right corner, leading the eye to the main focal point of the butterfly sitting on the tip of the leaf.

If you like butterfly pictures, click here for a past picture of a monarch butterfly taken in Monarch Glen (Milwaukee, WI).