Image – 1

Shooting Butterflies is a tricky affair especially in tropical countries. The opportunity they provide for a photographer is very brief.  One has to be very much alert and observant. One must  know their habits and  food plants as well as the plants where they prefer to roost.

It is the migration time for butterflies and they are in the last leg of their migration in my part of India. Yesterday evening I was searching for such rooting butterflies in my garden ( designed to attract butterflies).  And I found this beautiful “Lime Butterfly” which was fluttering here and there to find a suitable place to settle for the night.  After I ensured its settlement I approached it in a very slow phased manner. First, I calculated the working distance by moving the camera to and fro and this gave me a hint as where to place my tripod. Then I mounted my Canon with 100mm Macro lens on the tripod with 580 Ex flash connected through an off the camera chord. Started to shoot making experiments with flash, giving importance to its texture.

As the shot was done after sunset by about 7 PM the background was rendered dark. I decided to continue my shooting tomorrow morning also.

Image – 2

I got up very early morning by about 5 am and visited the place where it was roosting yesterday. I was so lucky to find it there and waited for the sun to rise up to illuminate the background. I balanced the ambient light with my flash to take the above shot. The camera setting was the same as yesterday and in addition I used a cable release to trigger the shutter as the shutter speed was very low. The colors of the butterfly in both the images do differ from each other as they are lit by different sources.

Lime Butterflies are also known as Lemon butterfly, Citrus Butterfly, Lime swallowtail and Chequered Swallowtail. Their favorite plants are Curry-leaf, Citrus, Radish etc.,