Butterflies require between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit in order to fly. If it is colder than that, their wing muscles can't function. Therefore, if you can find a butterfly in the early morning when the temperature had fallen the previous night, you can get as close as you want to them with a macro lens and they can't move. That's what I did with this eastern tiger swallowtail on Indian paintbrush in northern Michigan. I had to work fast, though, because the sun had just risen above the tops of distant trees, and the ambient temperature was increasing. To insure I had complete focus on the butterfly, I made the back of the camera parallel with the insect. I used f/16 for this picture to insure that all of the structures of the flower and the swallowtail were sharp. I knew the background wouldn't come into focus because it was so far away.
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