How to Photograph Butterflies by Anna Hipke-Krueger- Barbra Bretting Non-Fiction Runner-Up-
I’ m a few yards from the employee entrance of the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center when I see it: a butterfly. Its jagged wings are taller than they are wide, maybe an inch and a half long over all, and mottled grey underneath with a flash of orange when they open. This makes it an anglewing, part of a family of woodland butterflies all with those long, tooth-edged wings. From the color, I’ d guess that it’ s an Eastern Comma, probably the same one I saw on a walk of the grounds a month ago. That time I only managed a single, blurry photo from more than a yard away before a storm blew in and the butterfly sought shelter, vanishing among the grey tree trunks. I’ ve looked for it in the same place almost every day since then without luck; now here it is, challenging me to get a good picture before I have to start work. It’ s a game I’ m determined to win.
People at the NGLVC call me“ the butterfly lady.” I’ ve even received mail addressed that way. Besides teaching visitors about butterflies and native plants for an hour a week( my actual job), I raise Monarchs on my desk and amuse the maintenance guys with my butterfly-chasing antics. I’ ve been known to stop mid-sentence in a conversation and fling my arm across a coworker’ s chest to draw his attention to a Summer Azure in the middle of the path. I take these little insects seriously, partly because I take everything seriously, but mostly because few other people seem to. Our culture loves butterflies in its way, but in American minds they’ re closely linked to little girls, fairies, sugar, spice, and all the rest. Butterflies, then, like most things girl, have largely been misunderstood. If all we knew about butterflies were what we learned from their representations in department stores, we would think that their native habitat is princesses’ shoulders and that they have cartoon wings that come in only three different colors: white, orange, and blue.
As it turns out, there are as many as 20,000 species of butterfly distributed on every continent except Antarctica, with more than 150 in my home state of Wisconsin alone, and they exhibit more colors and patterns than a book of wallpaper samples. Far from being twee, butterflies have besides their gorgeous wings those same characteristics that we find so repulsive in all insects— the huge eyes, the segmented body with the fat, ridged thorax— plus hair. That most people don’ t know this shows that we haven’ t been looking very hard. But that’ s not surprising. Really seeing butterflies requires attention to detail, patience, and receptivity, all qualities that are discouraged by our speed-obsessed culture, and we have a bad habit of trying not to see what offends our rigid sense of the beautiful. Butterflies don’ t seem to give a damn what we think of them, though, or even whether we see them at all. They don’ t pander; for the most part, they demand that we come to them. The Jutta Arctic, for example, can only been seen in small numbers in northern bogs, and only around the middle of May. Though the Baltimore Checkerspot is more common and longer-lived, the caterpillars eat only a single native plant: turtlehead. No turtlehead, no Checkerspot. On the other hand, butterflies can appear when we least expect them, like this Comma in the driveway. So to photograph butterflies, you have to play by their rules or not at all.
I pull my point-and-shoot camera from my backpack and toss the pack to the ground. Like always, I take a few shots before trying to get closer. If the butterfly flies away before I can take any others, these photos are at least a way to check my identification and record the sighting. The Comma is peddling: crawling across the damp concrete and probing for minerals with its tongue, the straw-like proboscis, as it slowly fans its wings to collect warmth from the sun. I inch closer as smoothly as possible to avoid drawing its attention. Butterflies have remarkably good eyesight, and if it sees me move, I may never see it again. When I’ m a few feet away, I get down on my belly, set my camera to macro, and wriggle even closer until the lens is only a couple inches from the insect.
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