A stunning butterfly

Butterflies are not easy to photograph. They are constantly moving and depth of field is a major problem. The ideal is to have the entire insect sharp, but butterflies often hold their wings in a dihedral -- a ‘V’ shape -- and when using a telephoto such that the frame is filled with the insect, only a small aperture will produce the extensive DOF needed. But that’s a challenge because a fast shutter speed is also required to get a sharp picture. In Pokhara, Nepal, I spotted this exquisite Paris peacock butterfly drinking water in the gutter adjacent to the curb of a street as my photo tour group and I walked to a restaurant for lunch. I spent about 10 minutes trying to capture it. In order to get complete depth of field, I waited for the brief moments when the butterfly flattened it’s wings. I also stood such that the back of the camera (i.e. the plane of the digital sensor) was as parallel as possible to the wings. This location happened to be a bus stop, and every time a bus came by and people got on or off the bus, the butterfly would fly away but then it came back to the same place. Finally, I got what I wanted. However, the background was terrible so I meticulously used the pen tool in Photoshop to make a precise selection and then replaced the background. My settings were 1/320, f/16, 2000 ISO, and I took this with the Canon 100-400mm zoom.