Butterfly Photography is in Prime Time -- The Mating Dance

Real happy with this photo. Our road, Old Erbie Road is lined with wildflowers now. These milkweeds drive the butterflies wild. I got this by waiting and watching. I am convinced the best way to get good butterfly pictures is to post yourself near a few pre-selected flowers and let the butterflies come to you. 

I much prefer to shoot butterflies in flight. When I get 2 at once it makes my day. This was shot 1/3,200 of a second at f 10, 400 mm, ISO 2,000, hand held. 

Mourning Cloak Butterfly

Mourning Cloak Butterfly at Sunrise

There seem to be a lot of Mourning Cloak Butterflies around this year. Lately I have seen quite a few near our home bordering the Ponca Wilderness. I think it is a pretty good addition to your butterfly collection.

If you want to get detail in that very dark wing you need to overexpose in most situations.  I don't think this species is rare, but it is not common around my home.  Maybe all the rain this year has changed things.

Pileated Woodpecker Leaving the Nest

I have wanted this picture for a long time. Pileated Woodpeckers aren't so easy to photograph in most places, they keep their distance. Out back of our home they are very timid. I found this nest in a dead pine and have been sitting on it on and off for a couple of weeks.

One of the first principles of wildlife photography is to "first observe". You have to spend the time patterning your subject. I have 12 hours or so on this bird collecting clues about how to get the picture.

It is clear now this nesting female is feeding her brood. Today I watched her for an hour and a half. At about the 1 hour point I finally timed her correctly leaving the nest. Images like this take a lot of time to get a chance. Because everything happens so fast, I missed this a couple of times.

It is always lucky to get this kind of picture. Time and determination are rewarded. Early in the shoot I caught her half way out of the nest. Never give up, results come to grinders.

Pileated Woodpecker, Ponca Wilderness

Nesting Pileated Woodpecker

This picture could be better, but it is one I have spent quite a bit of time getting. This pileated woodpecker built a nest out back in a dead pine tree. I spent at least 5 sessions sitting waiting for any decent picture. It seems like any time I would look away this bird would fly off. 

Things have changed now. I think there are babies and she comes back rather than flying away and staying away. This morning I finally got the picture. I will be working this nest for a while now. 

Dogwood Bough at Sunset

The dogwood season is now just past peak. There are plenty of great trees left, but the early bloomers are now declining by the day.

I shot this on my trek out back to a pileated woodpecker nest. Like so may other photos, I go out for one thing, and get another. Think about chasing the angular light at the ends of the day.  I am real happy with this dogwood image, but like most every image, it is something given more than something taken.

Dogwood at Sunset in Cross Light

The Chase

This was taken the moment the male hummingbird jumped off the limb as he was chased off by the female. This happens all day long. Very hard to single out and capture.

The Chase

The Moment of Attack

An impossible shot. All it took was observation, a couple of hours and over 1,000 frames. Very happy with this image. This happens so fast it is impossible to observe with the naked eye. What you are shooting at is the percentage, knowing that the conditions and the signals of the perched bird point to it.

A lot is made of fancy rigs to get these pictures. Usually complex flash setups and the like. I shoot these hand held at ISO 1,250 and F8 or F13 if there is enough light at 400mm. I like to have the exposure around 1/2,000 of a second. I take test shots for exposure, often settling at 1 stop over exposure. I don't like flash because it washes out nuance. To me the animation of this photo by shadow is part of its appeal. If flashed, it would be relatively flat.

The Moment of Attack

Dueling Hummingbirds in Dogwood Tree

Dueling hummingbirds in our dogwood tree near our feeders. This is my toughest hummingbird picture to date. Hummers are a tough subject if you go for more than the standard sit on a limb picture. The tough part here is getting them in the same plane of focus. Hummers will tend to spiral around one another. 

Like many of my photos, this took 5 hours of observation, sitting, hundreds of misses, and 1/2000th of a second. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out the key to timing these photos. I have learned that the flaring of the tail feathers signals a likely takeoff in the next fraction of a second. Once I focused on that, I got many more good in flight photos. 

The male bird in this picture is actually preparing to take off in the next instant. The image makes him look like he is falling off the limb. I could not begin to time this instant. The key is to anticipate these moves by focusing on the tail flaring. Understand too that if you don't shoot at the instant of the flare behavior, you will never get the shot. It takes at least about a second to fire the shutter after you have seen the signal. You will miss a lot of shots, but you will get some of these too if you are patient. 

Dueling Hummingbirds in Dogwood Tree

Add Magic to Your Wildflower Photos

While the flower is the point of the composition, but the context provides the magic, the sense of the eternal. Most have a first impulse to take photos where the entire flower fills the frame. Over time, I have gone the other direction. I want to express the flower in context, and clearly in a moment in time, meaning a moment in light, something given and ephemeral.

I was drawn to this composition by crossing light, that dead limb setting the flow of the picture, the unusual purple blue of this bloom, and the amazing curly grass.

If we get it right, a composition captures the magic of nature. We never really get "the picture", we are given "a picture". Cultivate the habit of looking at context as well as subject, look for the magic given, heaven in a wild flower. Feel the magic, accept the photo given in a moment of light.

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour.” 

― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Horned Violets Ponca Wilderness

Rue Anemone at Sunrise, Ponca Wilderness

Rue Anemone at Sunrise, Ponca Wilderness

In my mind, nothing matters as much as selective lighting and dynamic range in composition. This Rue Anemone is cross lit and top lit. The selective lighting of the flower is in contrast to the other parts of the setting pops it out of the background.

I like this 3D effect, and I seek it in my wildflower work. This is my preferred "voice". If I live long enough I hope to paint now and then. This would be pretty close to what I would go for.

I took at least 20 pictures of this same flower. My friend Paul Caldwell calls this "working a subject". Try different angles, different points of view. Up light and down light. NEVER stop at the first photo -- study, move, look at the background and bokeh.  Give yourself choices for your post processing.

As is often the case, the tie breaker was the curvilinear branch at the background, the foreground detritus, and the glow of the flowers in mixed light. I think these compositions are more interesting than normally lit photos, and way more interesting than flash. I might hang this one because there are so many aspects that I like. Something more straight ahead would bore me.

Butterflies & Flowering Trees

Hummingbird Moth on Wild Plum

I mentioned butterfly photography on the blooming trees. This is an example of one picture I got today. These little guys are pretty hard to get. There was only one of them today and I got him in a pose that I like.

Think about the flowers as well as the butterfly. I think the spray of blooms, filtered light, and bokeh make this picture.