Reverdin's diverting report has reminded me to tell you a bit about my trip to Samos in April. This turned out to be a macro photography trip for Orchids, but there were some excellent butterfly sightings too. I located 31 different Orchids (including a new undescribed endemic hybrid) and 21 species of butterflies during my stay between 8th-18th.
Seemingly Greece had a warm wet winter, meaning that Orchids (mostly Ophrys, bee orchids) were flowering about 2-3 weeks earlier than usual. During my stay, weather started off cloudy and rainy (no butterflies!), changed to hot and sunny (good numbers) and then became warm and very windy (no butterflies!). Although the butterfly list was perhaps a little smaller than I would have liked, I was delighted to have picked up the three target species I was hoping for.
I stayed in Ireon, on the south coast in the centre of the island and hired a Daihatsu Terios 4x4 for access to sites across the island both high and low.
Below are some butterfly-related excerpts edited from my photography blog.
Samos, April 2013
Eastern Festoon
I'll just post shots of the species that were new to me.
Ist one is Eastern Festoon: a fantastic species which I hoped to see and which happened to be actually quite common. Its distribution appears restricted to Northern Greece, the Southern Balkans, and the Mediterranean coast of Turkey down to Israel.
Potami Bay, Northern Samos, 9th April 2013
Nikon D3S/200f4micro/cpl
ISO 2000 1/640 f/16 handheld
One of the occasions when I went for a quick walk to look for orchids and left half of the camera gear in the car… I found this female attempting to lay eggs, so it stayed put for long enough for a photo session in a relatively small area of flowers. But I was without my flash and flash bracket, and didn’t dare dash back to the car for them, so had to shoot handheld without them – hence the higher shutter speed. I don’t think the results are too shabby, though the subject allowed me neither a perfectly parallel view nor a perfectly clean background. Even at ISO 2000 with the D3S I didn’t bother with any noise reduction, though just a little is showing up slighly in some background areas.
Ist one is Eastern Festoon: a fantastic species which I hoped to see and which happened to be actually quite common. Its distribution appears restricted to Northern Greece, the Southern Balkans, and the Mediterranean coast of Turkey down to Israel.
Potami Bay, Northern Samos, 9th April 2013
Nikon D3S/200f4micro/cpl
ISO 2000 1/640 f/16 handheld
One of the occasions when I went for a quick walk to look for orchids and left half of the camera gear in the car… I found this female attempting to lay eggs, so it stayed put for long enough for a photo session in a relatively small area of flowers. But I was without my flash and flash bracket, and didn’t dare dash back to the car for them, so had to shoot handheld without them – hence the higher shutter speed. I don’t think the results are too shabby, though the subject allowed me neither a perfectly parallel view nor a perfectly clean background. Even at ISO 2000 with the D3S I didn’t bother with any noise reduction, though just a little is showing up slighly in some background areas.
- Attachments
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Green-underside Blue
On my first visit to the Palaeochorio site in the west of the island I was trying to find Ophrys leochroma, but failing! Weather was hot and sunny, so in fact better for butterflies than orchid photography, so I went handheld and started stalking them. With this method you really do need to stick at it, because eventually butterflies will need to rest or feed; in my experience, Lycaenidae and Skippers are easiest to pursue in this manner, though it still requires some patience. You just have to hope that they will stay accessible, perch nicely, and generally behave for you rather than fly away as soon as you approach. During this session, I managed a few other species (also Scarce Swallowtail, Green Hairstreak, Mallow Skipper, Eastern Dappled White), but only this one individual posed nicely enough for some good portraits.
South of Paleochorio, Samos, Greece (Orchid Site 1)
10/04/13
Altitude 163m
Nikon D3S/200f4micro/cpl/SB600/softbox
ISO 500 1/250 f/18 handheld
Below is the lovely Orchid I finally managed to track down on a subsequent visit.
10/04/13
Altitude 163m
Nikon D3S/200f4micro/cpl/SB600/softbox
ISO 500 1/250 f/18 handheld
Below is the lovely Orchid I finally managed to track down on a subsequent visit.
False Apollo
If you read my Chelmos report from last year, you'll know that I've become something of a Greek butterflies nut of late(!) In the early stages of planning my trip to Greece early this year, I knew that I’d have a time window of about week or so during which to spend at least part of the time to do some macro photography.
Last July my trip to Greece was pretty much exclusively a hunt for butterflies, and it was very successful, in that I came away with 51 new species (74 species in total) and a range of good new photographs, some of which are now adorning the room I’m writing this from, as large prints on the wall.
I may well have opportunities in future to visit other high-altitude locations on the Greek mainland (particularly noteworthy for the wide range of Lycaenidae – Hairstreaks, Coppers, and Blues). On this occasion, however, I determined to push myself further, learn about orchids, practice my flower photography skills, and also get some new butterfly species, by taking a springtime trip.
Trying to get technically good butterfly shots is a very different ballgame from working with flowers, especially in warm to hot, sunny conditions. The traditional way of shooting butterflies is to be out early or late in the day when the butterflies are sluggish or asleep, and shoot them as if they were static subjects rather like flowers. I have to say that I’m yet to fully master this approach, which requires a very high degree of patience and luck as well as technical skill; and, in places like Greece, there’s still no guarantee that butterflies will be asleep or sluggish, when early morning temperatures can already be in the mid-teens Celsius at least. My personal approach with butterflies is generally to work as flexibly as possible with a handheld setup that allows me to stalk subjects quickly but maintain sufficient working distance not to spook them when they are feeding on flowers (my lens-plate setup also means I can quickly switch over to tripod-shooing). This handheld method can produce excellent results, but the percentage of wasted shots can often be very high! For comparison, last year when I was hunting just butterflies in Greece, I shot over 58GB of shots in 10 days; this time, with a mixture of handheld butterfly- and tripod-based orchid-shooting for the same time, I shot less than half this amount.
So how does this all relate to the present shot of the False Apollo? Well, I was delighted to find this subject, but, as I feared, it was the only one I saw during the whole trip. I had to try my best with what presented itself to me…
My files tell me I took 231 shots of this single butterfly in 10 minutes! (Even for me this is pretty extreme!) And none of the shots are technically perfect. First of all, the subject itself is far from in top condition. Secondly, the lighting was pretty harsh, and even with a diffused flash and a polarizer, the large reflective wings of the subject were always going to be difficult, something which no amount of post-processing would entirely resolve (you can’t use a large UV diffuser with active butterflies!!). Third, it preferred to perch on flowers pretty low to the ground – ok for small subjects, but for the larger butterflies this usually means that isolating them from busy backgrounds at the larger f-numbers required is often difficult or impossible.
When you are on the shot you know all this, and keep going in the hope that you’ll have at least something for your efforts, with as much of the subject in focus as possible, and a reasonable, if not perfect, background.
So this is a record-shot rather than one for the wall, and a testament to the frustrations as well as excitement of butterfly photography. Nevertheless, species number 94 for my wild butterfly life-list!
Technical information for the shot:
Location: above Vorliotes, Northern Central Samos, 524m altitude (another spot for orchids, but which turned out in fact to be better for butterflies and birds)
14/04/13
Nikon D3S/200f4micro/cpl/SB600/softbox
ISO 400 1/250 f/18 handheld
Last July my trip to Greece was pretty much exclusively a hunt for butterflies, and it was very successful, in that I came away with 51 new species (74 species in total) and a range of good new photographs, some of which are now adorning the room I’m writing this from, as large prints on the wall.
I may well have opportunities in future to visit other high-altitude locations on the Greek mainland (particularly noteworthy for the wide range of Lycaenidae – Hairstreaks, Coppers, and Blues). On this occasion, however, I determined to push myself further, learn about orchids, practice my flower photography skills, and also get some new butterfly species, by taking a springtime trip.
Trying to get technically good butterfly shots is a very different ballgame from working with flowers, especially in warm to hot, sunny conditions. The traditional way of shooting butterflies is to be out early or late in the day when the butterflies are sluggish or asleep, and shoot them as if they were static subjects rather like flowers. I have to say that I’m yet to fully master this approach, which requires a very high degree of patience and luck as well as technical skill; and, in places like Greece, there’s still no guarantee that butterflies will be asleep or sluggish, when early morning temperatures can already be in the mid-teens Celsius at least. My personal approach with butterflies is generally to work as flexibly as possible with a handheld setup that allows me to stalk subjects quickly but maintain sufficient working distance not to spook them when they are feeding on flowers (my lens-plate setup also means I can quickly switch over to tripod-shooing). This handheld method can produce excellent results, but the percentage of wasted shots can often be very high! For comparison, last year when I was hunting just butterflies in Greece, I shot over 58GB of shots in 10 days; this time, with a mixture of handheld butterfly- and tripod-based orchid-shooting for the same time, I shot less than half this amount.
So how does this all relate to the present shot of the False Apollo? Well, I was delighted to find this subject, but, as I feared, it was the only one I saw during the whole trip. I had to try my best with what presented itself to me…
My files tell me I took 231 shots of this single butterfly in 10 minutes! (Even for me this is pretty extreme!) And none of the shots are technically perfect. First of all, the subject itself is far from in top condition. Secondly, the lighting was pretty harsh, and even with a diffused flash and a polarizer, the large reflective wings of the subject were always going to be difficult, something which no amount of post-processing would entirely resolve (you can’t use a large UV diffuser with active butterflies!!). Third, it preferred to perch on flowers pretty low to the ground – ok for small subjects, but for the larger butterflies this usually means that isolating them from busy backgrounds at the larger f-numbers required is often difficult or impossible.
When you are on the shot you know all this, and keep going in the hope that you’ll have at least something for your efforts, with as much of the subject in focus as possible, and a reasonable, if not perfect, background.
So this is a record-shot rather than one for the wall, and a testament to the frustrations as well as excitement of butterfly photography. Nevertheless, species number 94 for my wild butterfly life-list!
Location: above Vorliotes, Northern Central Samos, 524m altitude (another spot for orchids, but which turned out in fact to be better for butterflies and birds)
14/04/13
Nikon D3S/200f4micro/cpl/SB600/softbox
ISO 400 1/250 f/18 handheld