Unless otherwise noted,
photos are of free, unrestrained butterflies. Photos are mostly of
local butterflies, in Kane County or western DuPage County, Illinois.
Many of the photos were taken at Nelson Lake Marsh, about 8 miles west
of Fermilab in Kane County, Illinois, where I am a volunteer butterfly
monitor.
Photos through the
year 2001 were taken with my personal Sony Hi-8 camcorder and video-captured
using "Snappy" (by Play, Inc.) on my Dell PC at home. One might think,
as I did at first, that it would be easy to wave the camcorder at active
butterflies and select good shots with video-capture software. However,
not only does a camcorder, like any camera, have a certain "shutter speed"
which cannot freeze rapid motion, but I found that much video is not in
truly sharp focus. So I use the camera much like a still camera,
manually focussing and manually adjusting exposure with a resting butterfly
in view. Thus, I end up with about 5 to 10 seconds of video per shot,
and the whole summer of photos requires only about an hour of video tape.
It is quite easy to select and capture just the desired pose on screen
from video of, for example, a butterfly pumping its wings or actively getting
nectar at a flower. Although the quality of video capture is limited,
the camcorder is an easy way to obtain reasonably good photos.
Beginning in 2002,
most photos are taken with a Nikon 885 digital camera, providing better
resolution and better color. One of my first with this camera and
still one of my favorites is of the mating pair of Great
Spangled Fritillaries.
Part of the problem
of getting good butterfly photos, with any camera, is to get close to resting
butterflies. Some butterflies, like the Coppers and the Gray
Comma, make it easy by repeatedly returning to the same flower or perch.
A cool, sunny day when the butterfly is warming itself in the sun or an
extremely attractive nectar source like thistle can provide relatively
tame butterflies. However, many of the photos, like those of the
female dark form of the the Tiger
Swallowtail, were just lucky encounters, and the butterflies were gone
seconds after shooting the picture.