I finally saw a couple swallowtails collecting nectar from the Spotted Joe-Pye plants at the edge of our yard. I use to see them a lot in years past as I was mowing my lawn. But they have been scarce since I have re-taken up photography. It seems like more of an accomplishment catching them in the wild.
Today must be a day for the butterflies!!! Thanks for your comment and FAV on mine, I am more than glad to do the same for yours!!! I LOVE butterflies and this is such an excellent capture. The details are extraordinary and so is the lighting!! Love the POV also. Seems that here, there are less and less butterflies every year and this year was really a scarce year!! Guess I will have to plant a lot more flowers next year!! Instant FAV!
@cashew - You deserve it!
I only wish I had shut down the aperture a little more for a little more DoF. I know that the honeybee population has diminished. Our Rose of Sharon and we used to have a large rhododendron bush that when they were in flower you could hear the bees buzzing from 15-20 feet away. Now I see mostly bumblebees and only a few honeybees. Even the clover in the yard I'd see honeybees everywhere. Not any more! One thing I read blamed it on farmers use of chemicals. When we had a garden, like many other people I used Sevin to dust my plants to keep bugs from eating them. Years later I saw carpenter bees making holes in the soffit of my garage. I called the extension to see what I could do to get rid of them The man told be to buy Sevin dust and blow it into the holes the bees made and they would get it on them and take it into their nest and wipe them out. When I read the label it says that Sevin is highly toxic to bees. The very thing you want to pollinate your plants. I wonder if it or something else has caused the butterfly population to be reduced?
Beautiful rich colours here... I see your point about the DOF but then it is always such a balancing act, isn't it? Shut down the aperture and you have to increase the exposure giving more potential problems of motion blur or increases the ISO and introduce more noise...and make all these decisions before the thing flutters away!
@skipt07 I know we have the same problems with carpenter bees and I get as excited to see a honey bee as I do a butterfly, because there just aren't any!! We don't have hardly any farms around us except the horse farm and they use horse manure to fertilize their grass for hay. If we don't increase the population of honey bees our world will be in big trouble!!!
I only wish I had shut down the aperture a little more for a little more DoF. I know that the honeybee population has diminished. Our Rose of Sharon and we used to have a large rhododendron bush that when they were in flower you could hear the bees buzzing from 15-20 feet away. Now I see mostly bumblebees and only a few honeybees. Even the clover in the yard I'd see honeybees everywhere. Not any more! One thing I read blamed it on farmers use of chemicals. When we had a garden, like many other people I used Sevin to dust my plants to keep bugs from eating them. Years later I saw carpenter bees making holes in the soffit of my garage. I called the extension to see what I could do to get rid of them The man told be to buy Sevin dust and blow it into the holes the bees made and they would get it on them and take it into their nest and wipe them out. When I read the label it says that Sevin is highly toxic to bees. The very thing you want to pollinate your plants. I wonder if it or something else has caused the butterfly population to be reduced?