Butterfly Exhibit, San Francisco
Conservatory of Flowers, 2006
On April 6, 2006, I visited the butterfly exhibit at Golden Gate Park's Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco. I timed myself for an early arrival to give myself a bit of elbow room, since the exhibit is very popular with grade school teachers who need an educational outing for the kids. Sure enough, about an hour after I got there, the kids started to arrive---in large numbers.
The exhibit is a moving target, in the sense that butterflies are short-lived and over the course of the exhibit (April through October), many different species and samples of these insects will have passed through the place. I think I got images of all five of the species on display at the time and I plan to return in a month or two to check for new ones. Click on the thumbnails below to go to the appropriate pages for larger views.
 |
 |
 |
| Julia butterfly | Zebra Longwings butterfly | Palamedes swallowtail |
 |
 |
 |
| Polyphemus moth | Luna moth | Some plants |
Technology: I took all of these images with a Canon 1D mark II digital camera. I alternated lenses between a 24-70 mm f/2.8 and a 70-200 mm f/2.8 with a 12 mm extension tube to allow for closer focusing. All images were shot in raw mode at ISO 400 with a Canon 420 flash, using a shutter speed of 1/160th to 1/250 second and apertures from 4.5 to 14. The best images were processed in Adobe Photoshop CS2. (And those giant insects flying above the conservatory were photoshopped into place.)