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Flying Rainbow Jewels

December 25, 2008

Butterflies… dragonflies… damselflies… simply amazing tiny pals!

These flying rainbow jewels are flamboyantly visible, flaunting themselves in fascinating multihued shades.  Butterflies come in different sizes and shapes, with a range of distinct tints and patterns on their wings.  While odonates (dragonflies and damselflies) display vivid colors through their bodies, wings or tails.

 Capturing these little creatures on frame poses challenges to photographers.  Even at a huge garden, butterflies are nowhere to be found.  Or if one is spotted, surely it hops and flies frenziedly, almost impossible to track it especially if it dashes on top of trees.

On the other side, dragonflies bask under the sun so the photographer has to bear with them in chasing and capturing with the lens.  Or if you caught sight of them in the distant shades, the macro lens bumps its limited shooting distance range.  Even if a long telephoto lens is available, yet the subject rests in an unpleasing position or location, blocked by cluttered foreground/ background, then the powerful lens loses its capability.  For damselflies, the photographer has to be in a very low shooting position to get close to them, to the point of lying on the belly.

Often, it is luck if a real good subject, whether a butterfly or a dragonfly, lands close or presents itself and remained steady even just a few seconds in front of the lens.  So learning about these species becomes a very powerful means in photographing them.  To gain knowledge of their behaviors, to know when is the time or season they propagate, or to locate particular places to spot them, will armor the photographer more than the necessary photography tools he needs.  It is worth investigating like when is the breeding season?  What particular plants or flowers (for butterflies) and insects (for odonates) do they feed?  Where do they thrive, in vegetation or bodies of water?  Only when I started shooting dragonflies that I’ve learned that some of its orders are territorial.  They go back to same spot even if you try to shoo them, and they chase away same species that intrude their marked territory.  Interesting!

To catch these insects, I frequent the Singapore Botanic Gardens, with occasional visits to Alexandra Hospital Butterfly Trail and Butterfly Park in Sentosa.

My online galleries at Pbase website are regularly updated to showcase these flying rainbow jewels.  Here are the links to the galleries.

http://www.pbase.com/rivillaroman/butterflies

http://www.pbase.com/rivillaroman/odonates 

These galleries will be a growing collection as I continue to explore other nature parks to capture these six-legged friends.

 

Posted by litarto at 2:45 PM | permalink

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