Photographer’s Notes This was taken near a riverside restaurant in the Punahka Valley of Bhutan. It is certainly a swallowtail butterfly, possibly the papilio helenus variety, but I’m not sure.
The restaurant had a garden with a walkway lined with the purple flowers you see in the photo. The flowers attracted several dozen butterflies and some neat (but un-photographable) hummingbird moths. I boosted the ISO on my camera to 4000, set a moderate aperture, and began pinging away at 1/8000 of a second to try and stop the butterflies’ motion. These little buggers are fast!
I’m delighted with the result. Have to love the low noise of the D3. I have been reminded that butterfly photos are a dime a dozen around here and voters may be tired of them. Maybe you all have one 10 left in you for a nice butterfly?
I was tempted to title this, "My God, It's Full of Stars," a line from 2001 A Space Odyssey because of the star-like sparkles in the wings ... but I lost my nerve fearing few would get the now-thirty-year-old reference.
Post Processing • Convert from RAW (Lightroom)
• Basic Editing (Lightroom)
• Crop (Lightroom)
• Reduce Noise (Neat Image)
• Resize (PSCS3 Bicubic Sharper)
• Sharpen (PSCS3 Masked USM)
• Removed Dust Spot and a Distraction (PSCS3 Clone Layer)
• Save for Web (PSCS3)
Camera Data • Date: 2008-10-14
• Camera: Nikon D3
• Lens: 70-300 mm at 230 mm
• ISO: 4000
• Aperture: f/10
• Speed: 1/8000
Statistics
Place: 184 out of 394 Avg (all users): 5.6929 Avg (commenters): 7.3333 Avg (participants): 5.6598 Avg (non-participants): 5.7674 Views since voting: 1306 Views during voting: 259 Votes: 140 Comments: 7 Favorites: 0
What a super shot. I love those wings..incredible...I give you an 8
Ps. I have an entry in this challenge myself as well but it's not really going anywhere.
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