Butterfly Garden

I would love to have a butterfly garden in my own backyard, but that’s not realistic since it’s so costly to have one, and space is an issue for me.  When I heard that Catawba Science Center were bringing the butterfly garden back this year I was so happy.  They have several local businesses that sponsored them, one being McDonald, and I think it was $10k to open this butterfly garden from May through September. Lee and I visited the garden in the middle of July, and I hope that we will have time to go back this month or September.

This one landed on Lee’s foot.

Photos were taken with 5DMkIII, Canon 24-105mm f/4L lens, and EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens.

Saturday Random Photos

The Autumn colors are beautiful at this time of the year. My Ginkgo tree leaves are turning yellow.

Aperture Priority, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens, f/4, 1/500sec, ISO 100, exposure bias -0.7step, focal length 105mm, pattern metering

The Japanese maple tree leaves are turning red, it was green about 2 weeks ago.

Aperture Priority, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens, f/4, 1/100sec, ISO 100, exposure bias -0.7step, focal length 105mm, pattern metering

This is the last sign of Summer.

Aperture Priority, EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens, f/4, 1/2000sec, ISO 100, Exposure bias -0.7step, focal length 200mm, pattern metering

I was surprised to see the butterfly fluttering while taking a picture of the falling flowers.  I haven’t been real happy with my EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens because of the lack of the image stabilizer and my images came out blurry sometimes. I see now that it’s my fault that I didn’t try to work with it harder and my hands are not very steady, something that I need to work on.

Aperture Priority, EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens, f/4, 1/400sec, ISO 100, Exposure bias -0.3step, focal length 188mm, pattern metering

Aperture Priority, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens, f/4, 1/500sec, ISO 100, exposure bias -1step, focal length 105mm, pattern metering

Butterfly Bush

I’ve been admiring my neighbor’s butterfly bush this summer and I’m amazed of how it attracts so many butterflies.

I was testing out the P mode on my camera, the picture below was taken at f/4, 1/100sec, ISO-250(set at Auto ISO), Exposure bias -1.3 step, focal length 73mm, pattern metering mode. My camera is canon T2i with EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens.

I saw several butterflies and went over to take some pictures. This is the Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly.  It is a species of swallowtail butterfly native to North America, and one of the most familiar butterflies in the eastern United States.

This was taken at f/4, 1/125sec, ISO-160(set at Auto ISO), Exposure bias -1.3 step, focal length 99mm, pattern metering mode.

They are pretty much footloose and fancy free. I’m surprised to see the torn wings, it must be a rough life out there.

This was taken at f/4, 1/200sec, ISO-200 (set at Auto ISO), Exposure bias -1.3 step, focal length 105mm, pattern metering mode.

Below is a Black Swallowtail butterfly, the wing on the left hand side is badly torn.

This was taken at f/4, 1/125sec, ISO-500(set at Auto ISO), Exposure bias -0.7 step, focal length 70mm, pattern metering mode.