The Author – Bart Busschots
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Feb
21
Photo of the Week 158 – Back-lit Green-veined White
Filed Under Photography on February 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment
This week I thought I’d share another one of my butterfly shots form last summer. This guy was nice enough to sit still for quite some time, and allow me to get low and close behind him so that I was able to be eye-level with him while he was back-lit by the soft evening sun. I think this species, the Green-veined White (Pieris napi), is particularly suited to being back-lit because it emphasises the green veins in the wings.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Feb
6
Photo of the Week 156 – Four-Spotted Chaser
Filed Under Photography on February 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment
It’s been a while since I shared a Dragonfly shot in this series, so here’s one from last summer. The reason this shot of a Four-spotted Chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) stands out for me is that I was able to get a lovely smooth blue background by lining things up so that the entire background was filled with the reflection of a clear blue sky in the Canal I was shooting along (the Royal Canal).
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0ev
Jan
2
Photo of the Week 151 – Small Copper
Filed Under Photography on January 2, 2011 | Comments Off on Photo of the Week 151 – Small Copper
Following on form my recent retrospective on 2010 I thought I’d choose a shot for this week’s Photo of the Week that JUST missed out being included in that retrospective. 2010 was the first year that I managed to get some good shots of the Small Copper butterfly (Lycaena phlaeas) in Ireland. I had gotten a few shots of the species before, but in Belgium rather than Ireland. Obviously I’m delighted to have found a colony of Small Coppers along the Royal Canal, but I’m also really happy with the nice warm evening light I shot this in, and the nice dark un-cluttered background.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/1000 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0ev
- Processing: tweaked slightly with Aperture’s built-in Dodge & Burn plugin
Dec
27
Photo of the Week 150 – Yarrow
Filed Under Photography on December 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I’m so fed up of snow and ice now that I thought this week I’d go for a more summery theme for my Photo of the Week post, a nice flower! To be more precise, a closeup of a Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) flower. These lovely white flowers grace Irish hedgerows in the late summer each year.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/1600 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0ev
Dec
22
Photo of the Week 149 – Common Darter
Filed Under Photography on December 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I’ve had quite enough of all this snow and cold at this stage, so I thought I’d go back to some shots from my new project this year, dragonflies and damselflies. The shot I’ve chosen for today shows a very common kind of dragonfly we see a lot around rivers, lakes, and canals in Ireland, the Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum). This shot was in some ways very serendipitous – I’d put my bike down along the canal and was waiting for some butterflies or dragonflies to come by, when I noticed that the yellow walls of the the tyres on my bike seems to actually attract this guy! Maybe it looked like a massive yellow flower or something, or maybe it was just nice and warm. What ever his reason was, he sat there happily for about 10 minutes, and let me get as close to him as my lens could focus. I tried about 100 shots from different angles, with different depths of field, and with and without varying amounts of fill flash, but I settled on this one as my favourite. To give you some idea of how ruthlessly I often edit my images down, of the approximately 100 shots I took of this guy, I kept five!
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Flash: manually turned on (for fill flash)
- Flash Exposure Compensation: -3.0ev
- Processing: cropped to a square and tweaked with Aperture’s built-in Dodge & Burn plugin
Nov
15
Photo of the Week 144 – Forget-me-not
Filed Under Photography on November 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It’s been a while since I’ve chosen a flower photo for Photo of the Week, so I decided to remedy that this week. This is a shot of one of my favourite little flowers, they have a fantastic pale blue colour, and wonderfully fine details in their tiny flowers. It can be quite hard to tell the different varieties of Forget-me-not apart, but I think this is Field Forget-me-not (Myosotis arvensis).
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Nov
1
Photo of the Week 142 – The Common Blue
Filed Under Photography on November 1, 2010 | 1 Comment
One of my favourite muses this year has been the Common Blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus). It’s just so beautiful, and this was a good year for them in Ireland. The summer’s long gone now, but it comes back to me vividly when I look at this shot.
This is definitely one of my favourite shots of the Common Blue from this year. In many ways this is very clichéd shot, these guys love sitting on grass seed stalks, so you see loads of shots of them in this pose. However, this ones stands out to me because of the wonderful soft evening light, and the strong contrast between the butterfly and the background. This was possible because this guy was friendly enough to sit on a grass stalk that was in sunlight, while the background behind it was in shade.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.7ev
Jul
18
Photo of the Week 126 – Female Common Blue Butterfly
Filed Under Photography on July 18, 2010 | 2 Comments
I have quite a few good butterfly shots in reserve for future Photo of the Week posts, but I want to keep things nice and varied, so I’m only going to be posting one every few weeks. Since it’s been over a month since I shared a butterfly shot, I figure it might be time to share another.
This is a shot that I had been chasing for over a year when I finally managed to captured it last month. The Common Blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus) is very small, and very camera shy, but also very beautiful. The male’s back is plain electric blue, which is pretty spectacular, but the female takes things to a whole new level, having a beautiful mix of browns, blues, and oranges on her back. The patterns at the tips of her wings are both intricate and beautiful. Many people consider this the most colourful Irish butterfly, though I disagree, I think that honour should go to the Peacock Butterfly. Regardless of whether or not it’s the most colourful butterfly, it’s certainly one of the most beautiful.
The best chance you’ll get to capture the back of these fine lady’s wings is in the evening time. As the wind falls and the sun gets low in the sky, you’ll sometimes find them sun-bathing on top of tall stalks of grass or wild flowers like thistles with their wings open. If you approach very slowly and very carefully with a long enough lens you have a chance of getting off a good shot. I took this one on a beautiful still and clear summer evening along the banks of the Royal Canal near Deey Bridge and the 13th lock with my 55-200mm zoom zoomed in all the way to 200mm.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.7ev
- Processing: This shot was tweaked a little using Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin to selectively add brightness, contrast, and saturation to the butterly
Jun
7
Photo of the Week 120 – Inside Magnolia
Filed Under Photography on June 7, 2010 | 2 Comments
I’ve always loved the great photographer Imogen Cunningham’s take on Magnolia flowers, particularly this shot. So, earlier this year, when I noticed that the Magnolia trees in St. Patrick’s College were in bloom, I set out to have a go myself. Obviously I’m no Imogen Cunningham, but I’m quite pleased with this shot all the same.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Feb
28
Photo of the Week 106 – Peacock Butterfly
Filed Under Photography on February 28, 2010 | 2 Comments
Since the butterfly season will be starting up again soon I’ve been having a look back at my butterfly shots from previous years to see what gaps there are in my collection to help me plan my priorities for this year. In the process I also picked a shot for this week’s Photo of the Week, one from last year that I’m immensely fond of.
This shot is of the Peacock Butterfly (Inachis io), the most colorful and spectacular species we have in Ireland. I got quite a few shots of this species throughout the year, and in previous years (including Photo of the Week 32), but I particularly like this one because of where the butterfly chose to land. To get a nice out of focus background you do need there to be a bit of a distance between your subject and the background, and you need the background to be fairly even. In this case the butterfly landed on a very tall and beautiful special of Daisy called Black0eyed Susan. Because the Black-eyed Susans are tall, the leaves of the other plants in the garden were a long way below, hence the lovely soft green bokeh. The lovely yellow flowers themselves also add a lot to the shot, and the red of the butterfly contrasts nicely with both the green and the yellow really making it stand out.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.3ev