Phew ....what a hot week it was last week, hopeless for photography, or was it? I am not usually an early riser but I quickly realised that an early start was the only way to get some cool air. So on the Monday I got to Haugh Woods for 8 am and set off along the Butterfly Trail. I had my long lens with me and for two hours I was in the zone. After that it got too hot so I went home, but I returned for the next four mornings and as the week went on I got more successful.....
On my first visit to the woods the most colourful butterflies were the small Gatekeepers which are very numerous amongst the brambles and bushes. They have a habit of sunning themselves on leaves, so they provided a good target for my initial attempts to photograph these fluttery insects. All my pictures were taken at 300 mm (crop frame), with ISO 400, despite the bright sun. This keeps the shutter speed high in case my targets moved.
My first image makes the most of the bright sunlight - I like the way the shadow of the butterfly lies on the leaf underneath. The strong colours contrast with the green leaves which means that the subject is well defined but the shadows in the background are a bit distracting. This image was taken at f/14 to preserve depth of field but I could have used a wider aperture to soften the effect of the background.
I think it is the symmetry of butterflies which I find most satisfying, then the richness of the colour and thirdly I suppose it is about the fun of the chase.
On my next visit to the woods I spotted something a bit different. I didn’t recognise the black and white wings with the red underwings. Fortunately this individual was very intent on feeding from the thistle flower so I got lots of shots - all at different crazy angles. In this photograph we can see the iridescence on the wings which comes across as an Aqua sheen. When viewed straight on the wings are just black and white and the red underwings are not always visible.
Some investigation identified this as a Scarlet Tiger Moth. So not a butterfly at all but a day flying moth. Since I took this picture I have seen a couple more of these, so perhaps it is a good year for them.
I soon worked out that there were some areas of the woods which were more productive for spotting different types of butterfly than others. There is a long stretch of brambles that often had black and white butterflies flitting back and forth over it.
Straight away I knew what these butterflies were because I managed to photograph one last year - just one. This year they proved just as frustrating, rarely settling so that my eyes got worn out following them up and down and then watching as they disappeared off out of sight.
Eventually with perseverance I saw one settle and took my picture quickly, even though I was a fair distance away. I used f/10 for this picture and with the butterfly in focus some of the grasses in front and behind are blurred out.
This is a Marbled White - they remind me of Ink Blots. I eventually photographed three or four individuals and some were more brown than black. I was always a good distance away, so they are often small in the original images. This picture is cropped out of a bigger image but there are still enough pixels to provide good detail. I generally take pictures with the maximum number of pixels that I can.
Due to the limiting factor of the increasing heat, I was back home for lunch every day and then in the afternoon I could go through my pictures and hopefully learn from each trip. Having started the week with f/14, and then having tried f/10, for this next picture of a Wood White I used f/8. This has helped to isolate the butterfly and its perch in the midst of the surrounding leaves.
The Wood White is a speciality of Haugh Woods. It is fairly rare in the UK but our local woods are a recognised stronghold for it. The wings are more rounded than those of the more familiar Cabbage White and it is quite small.
I used single point focus to photograph the butterflies. To do this I move the locator around in my viewfinder and half press the shutter button to make sure that I can focus. Bright sunshine makes this much easier because in low light the camera sometimes struggles to focus. In the case of the Wood White I was able to focus on the eye and, as the leaf it was perched on was in the same focal plane, both are clearly defined.
After several days of intense heat I began to see a greater number of Peacock butterflies. I assume because they were hatching from their chrysalis stage. They certainly looked pristine and newly hatched. Peacocks are much bigger than many of the other butterflies that I had been hunting, and they were much more obliging about settling down to feed. This made it easier to photograph them, but their size presented a new challenge.
When I photographed the Wood White at f/8 its wings were closed and it neatly occupied the narrow plane of focus. The Peacocks are most photogenic when they spread their wings, but they then potentially stretch out beyond the focal plane. To address this I took this picture at f/10. I think that the wing tips are still out of focus, but not excessively so. I focused as always on the head so the body is all in focus.
Another advantage of the Peacock butterfly feeding habit is that they favour tall plants which means that the background can be a relatively long way behind them, so despite the smaller aperture the background in this image is completely blurred out and we can appreciate the beautiful patterns without a confusing background.
On my final day I hit the jackpot and finally managed to properly photograph the Silver-washed Fritillary. This has evaded me for the last two years. They are the biggest butterflies in Haugh Woods, according to the notice board, they have a wing span of 7.5 cm (nearly 3 inches in old money).
These Fritillaries fly very fast. They come swooping down out of the woods, gliding along on angled wings and I am fairly convinced that they just come out of the trees to tease me. They seem to be more far-ranging than most of the butterflies, which have a small patch that they fly around.
I saw them nearly every day last week so I suppose that by going frequently I increased the probability that I would see one feeding. Unlike the Peacock butterfly this individual looks a bit tatty, so it is not newly hatched. I read that they can live for up to a month. I got several different pictures, and in so doing I discovered that the male and female have slightly different patterns. This is a male.
So that is how I spent the hottest week of the year, and very rewarding it was too. I must admit that as soon as the intense heat went away I failed to get myself down to the woods early in the morning - too many other distractions. At least I have my photographs to remind me of my Tropical Adventure.