Butterflies and other flying beauties

I joined a local photography meetup group this past Sunday for a photo shoot. The weather was absolutely perfect, cool, sunny, with clouds. The great thing about being a cold day, although not good for the butterflies, it was great for us. Cold weather isn't very conducive to fluttering around, so the butterflies were very cooperative models.

I used both my Canon DSLR EOS Rebel 450D and my Canon Powershot A710IS. The Powershot takes as good pictures as my DSLR, so I like to get shots with both. My next post will be comparing the shots I took with both cameras.

Besides butterflies there were several aviaries where you can see hummingbirds, lorikeets and other colorful birds. There is a garden that was supposed to have passionflowers, but very few were in bloom. There were some other beautiful flowers on the grounds, though.

All very colorful. I still have a ton of photos to sift through, I will be listing some on etsy, soon.

When shooting butterflies, they say to wear perfume to attract them to you. I also noticed they were attracted to bright colored clothing. A few loved my orange jacket.

Best time to take butterflies is in the morning before they have warmed up.

Although I used a macro lens, for some of the shots, I found that I got some great captures with both cameras not using the macro. A nice zoom lens is good. Take as many photos as you can. If you have a sports setting, try that setting on your camera. And have fun and a lot of patience.