I recently took a vacation with my family to Key West for a week. My mom loves butterflies, so I went with her to the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory. The Butterfly Conservatory is essentially a green house full of plants, trees, birds and hundreds of free flying butterflies. I quickly discovered it is very hot and humid in the conservatory as the butterflies need the right temperature and humidity to thrive. I of course brought my camera and decided to see if I could capture some butterfly photos for my mom to take home with her.
Despite being a very hot and sunny day, the lighting in the conservatory was not as bright as I thought it might be. I had a hard time getting the shutter speed I needed to capture crisp photos of the butterflies even when they were sitting still. In order to get any photos that were not a blur of colors, I had to bump up my ISO to about 800. To capture the butterflies in flight, I had to use 1600. I also had to use between a 2.8 and 5.6 aperture. 2.8 was the only option when trying to capture shots of moving or flying butterflies. As a result many of my in-flight or action shots only have part of the butterfly in focus due to the narrow focal plane of my lens at 2.8.
The green butterfly would not keep its wings open once it landed on a flower or bush. In order to get a shot of the wings I had to capture it in flight. It took numerous tries but I finally got one I liked. This was my moms favorite one so most of my time was spent chasing this species around the conservatory.
I have not done much butterfly photography in the past but I had a good time and found it to be a good change of pace from my normal subjects.
