This long winged butterfly is known as an Ismenius. I’ve confused it in the past with the Tiger Longwing (Hecale) butterfly. The markings are similar, but there is a clear difference with the wings open. The Tiger Longwing has a solid brown area on the back. The ismenius has the black stripes on both sides of the wings. 

These are common at Butterfly Worlds, and I never tire of capturing images of them. They tend to rest for long periods on leaves or hanging from vines. This one was captured at f2.8, ISO 320, 1/200 of a second with my Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens.

It was a hot and a bit breezy when I went to Butterfly World the other day. When the shooting conditions become difficult I like to go in there with my Canon 70-200mm f4L telephoto lens. I generally set the camera on Shutter Priority at 1/500th of  a second to freeze any action and go for moving butterflies or groups of them clustered together on the leaves. Kind of like taking environmental portraits. The aperture usually winds up at around f4 to f5.6, which works well enough at capturing detail and giving some nice background bokeh. This one came out at 1/640 and f4 with an ISO of 320.

I was looking towards the flower bushes near the entrance to the aviary when I spotted this Great Egg Fly butterfly perched on this statue. I angled myself to get both figures in the statue and the butterfly into the frame. I processed the image in Lightroom 5 with the local adjustment brushes for clarity and sharpness. I also did a local adjustment for exposure on the brightest part of the statue to reduce the excessive brightness.

This unusual looking butterfly is known as the Rusty Tipped Page, which given the overall tone of his wings, seems like an apt title. I captured him the other day at Butterfly World here in Coconut Creek, Florida. It was breezy, brightly lit day, so I captured him at 1/500 of a second to freeze any motion, and the aperture was at f5, which allowed for plenty of detail as long as I made sure I was directly parallel to him.

Yesterday I shared an image of this species of butterfly on a different angle. This image is the result of shooting again with shallow depth of field, except this time the camera was directly parallel to the subject. The aperture was set at f3.5 with the shutter speed at 1/500. I was in shutter priority to make sure the shutter speed was fast enough to overcome any motion blur from breezy conditions.

Even being parallel, there is still some blurring in the wings. This goes to show how shallow the depth of field can be on a macro lens. The difference in difference between the wings in the foreground and the wings in the background is very slight, yet it is a challenge to get it all in focus. In this case it was worth sacrificing some of that focus to make sure the image wasn’t completely blurred by the butterfly being blown around by any breeze. And again, carefully focusing on the eye of the subject makes the image work.

One of the biggest concerns when I’m doing macro photography is depth of field. If you’re not familiar with this technical term, it refers to how much of a picture is in focus. Images that are in focus all the way throughout are said to have a great or large depth of field. Images where things get blurry in the background are said to have a shallow depth of field.

In macro photography this gets tricky because the closer I focus on a subject, whether it’s a flower, insect, or inanimate object, the more shallow my depth of field becomes. I’ve actually shot image at f22, which would normally have great depth of field, and there was still some blurring in the background!

I don’t usually go for great depth of field in my macro shots, depending on the angle of the subject and the nature of the subject itself. Some butterflies, for instance, look better if I get everything in complete focus. Others, like the one above, look interesting with the wings a bit blurred. I try to find a happy medium, so I shoot a lot at f5.6. This provides a good amount of critical detail and also provides a nicely blurred background (bokeh).

The image above was shot wide open. This means I used the smallest f-stop number in making the image. This made the eye, which I was very careful to focus on, come into perfect focus, while blurring the wings, part of the flower, and the background.

 This made for what I felt would be a more artistic, and potentially dynamic image. I hope you enjoy it.