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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.

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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.,

In Tamilnadu, a state in India, has plenty of villages. Some of them are remote even today. Down the centuries, the villagers have a belief that they their villages are being protected by these village Gods known as ” IYANARS”  . (IYANAR is the singular form) from any  enemies such as Diseases  evil spirits, bad thoughts and other stuff like black magic.

These gods are always found at the entrance of the village standing tall and colorful ready to drive away the evil forces.

But these villages are fast vanishing and rural beauty is being lost in the name of development. . its culture and traditions are also fast vanishing ..one can see the buildings and other cluttering things behind, encroaching these statues, marring the pristine beauty  existed once upon a time.  I have added modern structures behind these gods also to indicate the choking Tradition.

The shot was taken near Rasipuram, and  Namakkal, in Tamilnadu.

As the summer approaches, the forest fires are inevitable. The fire happens  due to various reasons and among them the main reason being Tourism. Irresponsible tourists throw their ignited cigarette buds on their way, and this sparks the heavy fire.

It was 11-30 pm in the night and I was returning from Bandipur. I saw this forest fire on the way. I stopped the car at a far away place and changed my lens from 70-200 Tele to 17-40  Wide  mounting  on a tripod.  I started to approach the fire slowly as the heat and its radiation was very high. I took several images trying various compositions.  It was very windy and the fire started  spreading its fangs ruthlessly in all directions. At one point of time I realized that I am almost surrounded all around by the fire. Immediately started running away with tripod to escape. I found a safe place and took this shot.