Butterflies

Yesterday, I made a return visit to Butterfly Wonderland, a local attraction featuring 3000 butterflies in a climate controlled atrium. They offer many interesting exhibits, but I’m happy just to stroll around the atrium in search of photographic moments. One of my reasons for going yesterday was to experiment with a recently acquired macro lens. Macro photography is extreme close-up photography, usually of very small subjects, in which the size of the subject in the photograph is greater than life size. A macro lens is designed to enable the camera to focus at a distance very close to the subject, in the case of my lens about 31 cm ( 1 ft.). Coupled with magnification close to that of a telephoto lens, it is possible to get greatly expanded images of very small subjects.

Butterflies offer the added advantage of being very colourful and generally, cooperative subjects.

My first picture features a Paper Kite, a larger butterfly, with a wingspan of 12cm-14cm (~5 “). The paper kite is of Southeast Asian origin, but can also be found in Northern Australia and Southern Taiwan.

The Painted Lady is known throughout most of the world. There are numerous varieties, but they all share the same general appearance.

I struggle with identification of this next butterfly but I’m confident it is part of the Danaus classification, which includes the Monarch butterfly. If you can help me with identification of this particular butterfly, kindly send me a note.

Finally, I have a brief slideshow to display some of the other butterflies I viewed and photographed. Hope you enjoy.