Blue morph

This is a Morpho peleides butterfly I captured in Mexico. The entire genus of Morpho butterflies are extremely fast and erratic fliers, and it's very difficult to get a good photograph of them. Many years ago I drove from Los Angeles down to Fortin de las Flores, a small town in eastern Mexico, because an entomologist I met told me there are dozens of exotic species of butterflies to see in August. He was right. At a typical roadside stop, I could easily count 12 to 15 different species nectaring on flowers in the weeds. In the town there was a park, and railroad tracks cut through the trees and then entered a tunnel. Butterflies used the cut in the forest as a flyway, but they won't fly into darkness. At the mouth of the tunnel, they'd turn around. That's where I waited with my butterfly net. After about an hour, I finally caught this Morpho. I gently folded its wings above the head, put it in an envelope (so it couldn't struggle and damage the wings), and put that in a Tupperware container out of the sun. A couple of young girls approached me and asked what I was doing, and in my pathetic Spanish I told them I was photographing butterflies. I then met their father who invited me to their home for dinner, and I ended up using their refrigerator to cool the Morpho down so it couldn't fly. I then took it outside and watched as it opened its wings to gather enough warmth to fly. I took several pictures and then it was airborne again. I shot this with film, a flash, and my settings were probably 1/125, f/32, and I used Fujichrome Provia 100 slide film.