Butterfly Photography

Summer 2025 has been an incredible year for butterfly photography. Our buddleia, which is usually hardly visited, has been teeming with them this year. I often see between 10 to 20 butterflies at any given time, all day long. I'm not a lepidopterist, and I used to struggle to distinguish between a Peacock and a Painted Lady butterfly. However, with a bit of knowledge, I've made great strides in identification. It's amazing how photography can enhance that understanding. My favourite collective noun for butterflies is "kaleidoscope," although terms like "flutter," "flight," "swarm," and "rainbow" are also commonly used.

So, our buddleia, as far as I have been able to tell, has attracted three of the four butterflies I have seen in the garden this summer: Peacocks, Red Admirals and Large Whites. The other I've seen in the garden but not on the buddleia, so consequently much harder to photograph well, is the Gatekeeper.

I still haven't got round to adding a macro lens to my collection, so all my butterfly photos have been taken using my Canon telephoto (100-400mm). As always, when using the telephoto, I aim for a minimum shutter speed of twice the focal length, i.e. shooting at 400mm, I'll look for a shutter speed of at least 1/800s. Ideally, it should be higher, and clearly, the higher the less chance of any camera movement degrading the sharpness of your shot.

I used to set the aperture as wide as possible (f5.6 at 400mm on my Canon) based on being able to shoot at the highest possible shutter speed. However, I have started shooting at f8 for a greater depth of focus - nothing worse than a shallow depth of focus being pin sharp on the front wing and soft on the wing behind - unless that is the artistic effect you are after!

As usual, it then becomes the eternal juggling act of compensating shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Where I used to shoot at the lowest possible ISO (50 on my Canon 5D), I am comfortable with shooting at ISO 400 and then cleaning up the noise in post-processing. Of course, if you are shooting on a bright day, then a lot of these considerations become less important.

If you are involved in club photography, then you will already know that "Nature" is a very strict genre. The emphasis is on the truthful and honest depiction of the natural world, generally disallowing manipulation of the image's truthfulness, such as adding or removing elements, and prohibiting the inclusion of human-created subjects like cultivated plants or domestic animals.

Along with the above, there are very classic compositions. All the butterfly photos I see in competitions are in sharp focus, typically wings together, photographed vertically from the side on a plant stem, and with a milky background that doesn't distract. See Common Blue below.

Peacock

Peacock

Red Admiral

Common Blue

Common Blue (male)

Common Blue (female)

Large White

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper

Meadow Brown