How To Photograph BUTTERFLIES and MOTHS

Megan Loftie-Eaton – Animal Demography Unit – University of Cape Town

STEP 1You need a camera, of course , BUT you don’t have to have a macro lens or an expensive camera in order to take photos of butterflies and moths.

A normal “point-and-shoot” will work just fine (even a cell phone camera) – depending on which species, and the size, of butterfly/moth you are photographing

If you do have a DSLR camera and a macro lens (normal kit lenses work great as well), you will probably get better photos, but these are not necessary for the purpose of LepiMAPping

STEP 2Butterflies are more active during the hotter times of the day, and you can usually find them around the higher lying areas of a landscape (this is known as “hill topping”) – the key words for photographing butterflies are: patience, patience, patience!

Moths are active at night - so a good way to attract them in for a photo-shoot is to leave your outdoor lights on. Soon you will have lots of moths sitting on the wall waiting for their picture to be taken (moths are more obliging than butterflies when it comes to having their picture taken)

Try to get a close-up shot of the butterfly/moth – this is important for identification purposes

STEP 3If possible, try to get an upperwing as well as an underwing shot – this helps a great deal with species identification!

UnderwingUpperwing

STEP 4To get your photo LepiMAP ready, please crop it to have the butterfly/moth in the centre of the photo and resize the photo so that it is no bigger than 1 Mb in size (JPEG format)

STEP 5CONGRATULATIONS!!! You can now make your awesome photos count for biodiversity conservation by submitting them to LepiMAP through the Animal Demography Unit’s Virtual Museum website at http://vmus.adu.org.za and here is how: http://www.slideshare.net/meganloftieeaton/how-to-submit-records-to-the-animal-demography-units-virtual-museums-28710898