Today’s Post by Joe Farace
National Learn About Butterflies Day is on March 14, a day to celebrate and learn about one of the most beautiful and colorful creatures in the world — butterflies! Butterflies are important creatures because they help to pollinate flowers. But, more than that, they are pleasing to the eyes, and we love seeing them flying around us. My friend Rick Sammon calls them Flying Flowers.
Butterflies are flying insects with wide, delicate wings. Their colorful wings and body make them popular amongst everyone, including adults and children who chase and play with them. A butterfly’s life cycle or metamorphosis is interesting as they transition through four phases to become the beauty we all see and love.
A butterfly starts as an egg. The egg hatches within three to seven days into larva, depending on the species of butterfly. The larva or caterpillar feeds on leaves or flowers, losing its skin several times as it grows; the process is called molting. The larva grows steadily over several weeks till it is several times the original size and then turns into a Pupa. Many of these Pupas are suspended under a branch, hidden in leaves, or buried underground and they become parts of the adult butterfly when they finally break free within 10 to 15 days.
National Learn about Butterfly day is an initiative to sensitize and educate everyone, young and old, about butterflies and their importance to the ecosystem. More than their beauty, a teeming population of butterflies signifies a thriving ecosystem due to their role as predator and prey.
How I Made this Photo: I photographed this young woman at Butterfly World in Coconut Creek, Florida using an Olympus E-20 with 35-140 mm (equivalent) f/2.0-2.4 lens at 72mm. The Manual mode exposure was 1/500 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 320. T
his was available light shot that was made in an indoor location that had extremely challenging lighting conditions with a mixture of mostly natural light with some flash. After this experience, I quickly realized that I needed a ring light when working under this kind of lighting I encountered at Denver’s Butterfly Pavilion. In Denver, I switched to using Canon DSLRs along with the company’s MR-14EX ring light. I also used manual exposure mode because every automatic mode I tried when photographing butterflies there didn’t work—even though the literature says the ring light works with all the camera’s automatic modes. This was clearly one of those 10% times, when it didn’t.