Pair of Tawny Costers

As you have seen in my earlier blog posts, I am fond of using long lenses for macro photography. My favorite is 300mm lens as it gives you a sufficient distance from the insect and does not distract it. Disadvantage being a heavy rig you can’t hand hold it. It is not a true 1:1 macro by definition. But you get sufficiently close-up photography. My earlier lens 300mm f/4 was excellent in that aspect. Now with my 300 f/2.8 I use a 1.4x tele converter and reduce the minimum focusing distance.

Pair of Tawny Costers

On that day I was looking out for butterflies I found a pair of Tawny Coster (Acraea terpsicore) Butterflies perched on a dry foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) plant. I was using my Canon EOS 1D Mark IV fitted with Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM + Canon EF 1.4x III Extender on a Benro C45T Carbon Fiber Monopod. To know more about this butterfly you can check my earlier blog on Tawny Coster here.

Tawny Costers fighting

In my earlier Tawny Coster shoot I had used almost a similar setup. Now with Canon EOS 1D Mark IV and 1.4x TC focusing was much faster and total usable shots from a shoot went up dramatically. Canon 5D Mark II used to hunt for accurate focus which was not the case for 1D mark IV. Canon 5D mark II might be a fine camera due to its full frame sensor and exquisite details, but when it comes to sharp and quick focus it is difficult to beat 1D Mark IV.

Tawny Costers fighting

As soon as I started photographing these two males who were sitting perched on a dry branch, another male tawny coster butterfly wanted to use the same perch. This gave me a great chance to capture butterfly in flight. Unlike birds in flight, butterfly wing movement is quite quirky. Butterflies have strong muscles in their thorax which force their wings up and down on a fulcrum basis. They actually go in a slanted figure 8 motion that propels them forward through the air. It is difficult to get butterflies wings in nicely aesthetic position while in flight unlike birds. Using flash photography you could easily freeze their movement, but here I was shooting using natural light. Since I needed a greater depth of field I was using f/10 aperture. 1/250th or 1/320th was insufficient to freeze their flight completely.

Tawny Costers fighting

As soon as the new entrant reached their perching spot I could see the perched males becoming agitated and trying to ward off the intruder. He tried to displace both the incumbents without any success. This fight went on for quite a few minutes. He tried all his tricks without any use.

Tawny Costers fighting

Male butterflies usually sit in these perches waiting for passing females to mate. Their pheromone guides female butterflies and attracts them towards males. Males usually choose a open place near a free path stalking for females. This is useful for us photographers as it gives a great opportunity to capture them. Unfortunately these two males that day had chosen a dry plant which was in a very crowded place. If I was using any shorter focal length lens my background would have been cluttered by the dried twigs in the background. 300mm + 1.4x lens setting gave me a beautiful creamy bokeh. I was using natural evening sunlight to shoot these photos.

Tawny Coster

After prolonged struggle to displace these males failed, the intruding male chose another twig to perch. This in my opinion was a better place, but photographer’s and butterfly’s judgment do differ. For me the greenish background of the new perch was very eye catching on the tawny color of the butterfly. There was no way of finding out what the butterfly would have thought. Wish I could speak their language!

Female Plain Tiger

I had written long back on Plain tiger (Danaus chrysippus) butterfly. At that time I was using Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM with 36mm of extension tube to photograph this Plain Tiger butterfly. Soon after the Scarlet Skimmer dragonfly photograph session which I published last week, I spotted a female plain tiger butterfly nearby. I used the same setup as I used in the dragonfly photography. My rig consisted of 1D Mark IV camera with Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L + 1.4x tele-converter stabilized on a monopod. Beautiful evening sun gave me plenty of golden light to experiment around this butterfly. It was not at all shy in posing for me as was evident in the photos which is one of the great advantages of using a long telephoto lens for closeup shoots.

Female Plain Tiger Under Side View

As I photographed I noticed that the butterfly had a wound on the thorax at the base of the right hind-wing. The Plain Tiger is protected from attacks due to the unpalatable alkaloids ingested during the larval stages. The larvae pf this butterfly feed on host plants like milkweeds (like Asclepias, Calotropis) which are have toxic alkaloids. The butterfly therefore flies slowly and leisurely, generally close to the ground and in a straight line. This gives a would-be predator ample time to recognize and avoid attacking it. Inexperienced predators will try attacking it, but will learn soon enough to avoid this butterfly as the alkaloids in its body cause vomiting. The butterfly I was photographing also must have escaped such an attack on it.

Female Plain Tiger Side View

It was an old wound, the lymph had accumulated and clotted around the right side of the thorax. Even though injured the butterfly was flying normally and was resting like any other of its kind. Tenacity of this butterfly was amazing. The butterfly also has a tough, leathery skin to survive such occasional attacks. When attacked it fakes death and oozes nauseating liquid which makes it smell and taste terrible. This encourages the predator to release the butterfly quickly. The Plain Tiger thus has the ability to recover “miraculously” from predator attacks that would kill most other butterflies.

Female Plain Tiger Upper Side

Even though a macro lens and a flash setup is ideal to get extremely closeup photos of these butterflies, my tele-macro setup works nice. Drawback of this setup is that it needs a good light and is heavy and cumbersome. So it is not very portable. With that setup I can take quite a good amount of closeup shots with a very creamy bokeh effect. I can also using the same setup photograph birds and other distant object which is a real bonus as the same rig works as dual purpose setup.

Female Plain Tiger Closeup

Dried Foxglove

It was an overcast evening. Tropical cyclone 4A was getting intensified in the coast. I was tired after trying to cajole a rat snake (Ptyas mucosus) to give nice pose to my camera. It was busy hunting and did not give provide any good photos. I did not want to disturb its hunger. Then I saw this Foxglove plant all dried and thorny. Here are 2 photos taken using Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM on my Canon EOS 5D mark II using Canon Speedlite 580EX II with Lumiquest Clone diffuser. For the shot above I used F/11 and 200th of second exposure thus throwing the background dark. This is the same technique where you want the object in focus will brightly lit, highlighted and background will be dark and does not distract the viewer.

Foxglove

For the second shot I wanted the background to show. Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM Produces a very nice bokeh effect and thus the creamy background will not distract the foreground object. Since the light was low, I used same setup and flash but changed the aperture to F/4 and speed to 40th of second. This setup allows background to show thus resulting in a pleasing result. Fill flash illuminated the object and made it to stand out from the background. F/4 resulted in a very shallow depth of field. So I had to step back to get sufficient parts of the plant in focus.

Digitalis purpurea Common Foxglove, Purple Foxglove or Lady’s Glove, is a flowering plant in the family Plantaginaceae (formerly treated in the family Scrophulariaceae). Due to the presence of the cardiac glycoside digitoxin, the leaves, flowers and seeds of this plant are all poisonous to humans and some animals and can be fatal if eaten.

Extracted from the leaves, this same compound, whose clinical use was pioneered as digitalis by William Withering, is used as a medication for heart failure. He recognized that it reduced dropsy, increased urine flow and had a powerful effect on the heart. Unlike the purified pharmacological forms, extracts of this plant didn’t frequently cause intoxication because they induced nausea and vomiting within minutes of ingestion, preventing the patient from consuming more.