How To Enjoy Butterfly Photography

Butterfly photography is one of the highlights of summer. The colorful wings are a real eye catcher. Let's look at some ways of approaching butterflies and getting some unique images of them.

Backyard Butterflies

Your own back yard can be a very productive place for photographing butterflies. By planting species such as Buddleja (also known as butterfly bush) you're not only attracting these colorful creatures but many more nectar feeding insects. As a bonus you'll have a new species of flower on your doorstep that is photogenic in its own right!

On top all the extra opportunites for Butterfly Photography you'll be contributing to wildlife conservation.

Many just think of the winged adult Butterfly, overlooking the fact that you'll attract much more Butterflies by providing food for the larval stage - Caterpillars.

A book such as the Stokes Butterfly Book lists the plant foods that Caterpillars require.

Butterfly Backgrounds

Tropical butterfly farms are a great way to practice butterfly photography.

They have large tropical species that are easy to approach. They may even land on you!

Let's use this setting to look at backgrounds.

In this first photo the background is not pleasing...

as well as lacking color, it makes the Butterfly backlit which underexposes it.

A change in position alters the image radically.

Time of Day

Butterflies are hard to track during midday as the fly from flower to flower looking for nectar to feed on. Wait for them to start feeding and they will be briefly still. In the photo below you can see its tongue called a proboscis, drinking nectar.

Approach slowly without casting your shadow over the butterfly otherwise it will fly off.
They will be less active early mornings or late evening.

This mating pair of Common Blue Butterflies was found late evening by crawling through grasses where I had seen others flying around earlier.

By slowly positioning parallel both butterflies become in the plane of focus. Notice also how there are no distracting grasses in the background.

The late evening light adds to the image as well.

If you can find them at dawn when they are covered in dew they will be unable to fly. The dew droplets will add a pleasing touch to the image. The wings will be folded so you'll only be able to photograph the underside of the wings.

At dusk the butterflies will find a place to sleep, again providing the advantage of them being still and in better lighting. They will be hidden from predators so take care not to tread on them and leave them concealed as they were.

If you've enjoyed this page you may want to read about

photographing other insects.

Return from butterfly photography to macro photography