Into the world of butterflies

Probably my favorite subject in photography, are butterflies (alongside moths). They are beautiful, colorful, not too small to always need my macro attachment on the ready (though it can help a lot), butterfly seasons are my favorite. 

I say seasons, because where I live, butterflies have 2 or 3 generations : in spring, summer and autumn. In all my winters, I've seen butterflies very rarely, and only due to global warming which gave us a few very mild, and quite warm winters. 

As early as my Sony camera days, I've been taking shots of these lovely insects, usually from a few meters away and using my digital zoomX24. Some of the results were dismally unclear, though with my smaller computer screen in those days didn't show the real damage in photos where clarity was far from optimal.

There were, however, some really lovely close-ups as my patience in waiting for these butterflies to sit still and get used to my presence and where my skills in coming slowly but surely closer to them helped getting much clearer shots than a small butterfly in the middle of a field of dirt or plants. 

I already loved trying to figure which butterfly I was looking at all, and learned to identify some of them fairly easily from a distance, whilst others required a lot more research - photo and book at hand, for example.

Then, came the Fuji days, and lastly, additions of both macro attachment, and a versatile tripod for stability as well as coming much closer to my subjects, and you'll see in later posts how these tools helped showcasing details I couldn't at first even guess.

Although not in chronological terms, here are my first 7 butterfly photos on the blog.

Polyommatus thersites Can, or Chapman's blue - these are all pics of male and I assume, from my folders that I have no female photos of them as  of yet. They must hide better, I guess. 

This following shot of another Chapman's blue is one of my favorite, ever,  in very windy conditions. They held steadfast against the gusts, and didn't even mind my presence, on my 4's so to speak! 

Although in the same family (called Lycaendiae), this next butterfly is a whole different Genus. Here we are with male Lampides boeticus, aka peablue, or pea blue, or long-tailed blue.

I wanted to show a third "blue" butterfly, but my photos of it (the Holly blue) aren't too clear and I didn't manage editing them properly. I hope to run into that kind again, so I can show the differences with the above.

Now, I go to another favorite Inachis io, as in, European Peacock - and you'll see why it's called like that from the colorful dorsal side - you can see it on a lilac

Let's finish with, possibly, an unknown butterfly - or, maybe, as I can see with google image search which told me this is called a "painted lady" or, scientific name Vanessa Cardui, photo in a place you wouldn't necessarily expect to see butterflies : a cemetery. I bumped contrast and saturation, mainly, and reduced a tad the brightness which had shown the lavender too white.