How to shoot butterflies to look good?

May is the tail of spring, and it is about to enter early summer, which also happens to be the most active time for butterflies. As the most beautiful insect, it will inevitably become the object of photography lovers. Today, we are going to talk about how to shoot flying butterflies well and beautifully.

First of all, we must understand the habits of butterflies.

As butterflies are warm animals, their body temperature is influenced by the external environment, which usually appears before 1 1 in the morning and from 4 pm to dusk. Too high or too low will not go out for activities and foraging, so butterflies will only appear in a specific temperature range. Butterflies are generally most active in the temperature range of 18~27 degrees. If the temperature is higher than 30 degrees, most butterflies will hide in the shade of the forest and stay indoors.

Grasp the best shooting time

When butterflies just emerge: the emergence process is the last stage of their "complete transformation" and the most important stage, which determines whether they can become the most beautiful butterflies. Generally, the eclosion process takes about one to two hours, so that the nervous system can be connected to the wings. In the process of eclosion, the wings are soft and unable to fly, and this is the best time to shoot.

When butterflies eat: all animals are very focused on eating, and butterflies are no exception, and will not easily notice the existence of foreign objects. Photographers can wait until the butterflies are finished, and the success rate is bound to increase greatly.

Butterfly shooting

Parallel shooting: When butterflies eat, their wings are upright, so parallel shooting is the most commonly used shooting angle.

Look-up shooting method: take the solid color sky as the background to support the gorgeous beauty of butterflies.

Shoot from above: Shooting a butterfly must be shooting beautiful patterns on its wings, so it is most beautiful to shoot from below when the butterfly opens its wings.

Make good use of background light spots to set off the beauty of butterflies: sunlight penetrates through leaves and forms beautiful light spots in Jiao Wai. This point light source is used as the background to make the whole picture look brighter.

Local shooting: use macro to shoot the butterfly's body and show the unique insect body language.

White space shooting: Let the whole photo use a large area of white space, only put the butterfly in the corner of the picture, so that the whole photo has more imagination.

Backlight shooting: Using the low angle of the light source at dusk, the warm backlight penetrates the wings of the butterfly, making the whole butterfly look like it is shining.

Precautions for shooting

Choice of shooting lens: If you are shooting a butterfly that is eating or flying, try to shoot it with telephoto and high pixels, which is conducive to later cropping and magnification. If you are shooting a butterfly that is emerging, you can take a close shot with a macro lens.

Speed up the shutter speed as much as possible: since the butterfly is a dynamic object, it is more advantageous to use the shutter first. When the butterfly moves, it is best to adjust the shutter speed of the camera to 1/500 seconds or more. If the butterfly is static, aperture priority can help photographers create different depth of field effects.

Be gentle when approaching the butterfly: because the butterfly is a smiling insect after all, and the human body is hundreds or thousands of times bigger than it, one of your actions may be an earthquake with a magnitude of 10. The photographer's swaggering approach will definitely scare the butterfly away, so you must approach the butterfly gently to shoot, or wait for the butterfly to feed in front of a flower before shooting.

Try to use high-speed continuous shooting: If you want to catch butterflies that move faster or fly, you must use continuous shooting, or even use JPG format to improve the speed of continuous shooting.