Swallowtail Butterfly

While at Krause Springs in Spicewood, Texas…near the entrance they have a small butterfly garden.  You can find a few fluttering around.  Up on this cool looking plant/flower was this beautiful Swallowtail Butterfly.  The flowers were about 7 feet high so I was using my 105 Macro hand held to try and catch some photos.  He was a bit skittish, but was used to me in about 10 minutes.  The tough part was that it was breezy and these tall flowers were blowing in the wind.  A great challenge photographically!   I tried shooting manual and increased my shutter to 1/250 of a second.  Only a few shots came out.  As it always goes, this was my first photo.   The rest were a bit blurry.  A breeze or wind is a tough one in macro photography.   I was also curious to see how a butterfly works with fractalius and here is an extra version!   Enjoy the doubleshot!

I just grouped all my Fractalius photos together in a gallery on my web site here…  Talke Photography

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Photo Fun: Water Drops

As I consider myself a landscape photographer…I always enjoy seeing the photos the people post on Flickr of marco shots where you have to look closely and figure out where and how it was done.   Photography offers never ending options and styles.  I hope one day to get to em all!  Macro work has always been a favorite of mine.   The small details become large and very interesting.   I will try this spring to go out an work on macro shots with wonderful wildflowers we have in Texas.   But why wait until the spring…macros shots are all over your house.  I bet if you gave yourself a photo assignment of shooting household items in macro…you will come up with some cool photos!

One shot I always wanted to try was putting water drops on the back of a CD. Simple and easy to do…just lay a CD down, fill a cup with water, use a straw to create the water drops and a spray bottle to create smaller droplets…add in sun from a window and this is what you get using a macro lens.  Try a few angles..crop if needed and a cool shot appears!   The drops create a nice prismatic effect.  Go out and have fun with your camera.  There is a wonderful world out there to explore!

Talke Photography Settings:

• Camera:  Nikon D300
• Lens: Nikon 105 Macro VR f/2.8
• Setting: Aperture  Mode
• Focal Length: 105.0mm
• ISO: 200
• Exposure:   1/8 second
• Aperture:  f/20
• Gear:  Tripod, Cable release
• Post Process: Adobe CS4