Wildlife photography is a special niche, and is not something I typically seek out on it’s own. Partly because I lack a really long lens (300mm just ain’t enough), and partly because I just don’t have the patience. But when Karen said yesterday afternoon, “You should come out and shoot the swallowtails. They’re all over the lilacs“—well, that’s the kind of wildlife scenario I can really take advantage of. No fancy equipment or waiting in a muddy blind for a week and a half is involved, and the little buggers are right outside my office window.
And she was right, they were all over the place, flitting gently among the blossoms and alighting occasionally. I pre-set my macro lens at the best focus distance for the composition I was after, set my ISO high, opened up the aperture a bit, and then just stood in front of my favorite blossom and waited. I took maybe 25 shots, and this was the only one that was reasonably sharp. That’s a pretty good batting average, actually.
Here’s the bigger Flickr version.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 100mm f/2.8 macro at f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/1640th of a second.
