Not long to wait...

I've decided to break away from showing just birds on this photoblog and showcase some of my best images of butterflies. I'm not sure if they quite sit well here...opinions sought as always on this subject, but one can only marvel at their colour and pose. The image above is one of my overall favourites as it catches the Silver-studded Blue peeping through the Trefoil plant.

I took these images last year in Italy, where the early morning light is so intense and brings the best out of the colours. Early butterfly sightings are already on the Cornish forums, so not long to wait before we get another chance to find and photo these insects.

The above image is a Spotted Fritillary and was the commonest butterfly in the local area. Farming practices were fairly basic and as such, had little impact on the environment - there were literally hundreds of fritillaries, most of them posing like the one above.

The Bath White above was taken with the Nikon D3 and 300mm F/2.8 lens on a tripod. The 300mm lens is not a true macro but does have a reasonably close focus of 2.5 metres. With the lens set at F/4 aperture, some low depth of field images with nicely blurred background can be achieved.

The Small Heath shot above is typical of how I try to photo butterflies. It's far from easy, but talking to other wildlife photographers at the CWT photo group, the key is to eliminate background interruptions so that the image "focusses" solely on the insect. Not easy.