From bees, or flies (yes the bee in my previous photo analysis was a fly, not a bee), to butterflies.  Many of the challenges are the same, and many of the solutions also, but since this particular picture was taken in a tropical garden there are a couple of extra challenges that you will be familiar with if you've ever tried, and if you haven't, here's how to avoid a couple of pitfalls...

My previous post was of a picture taken outdoors in a well-lit garden on a warm dry summer day.   In that little sentence I have encapsulated the most pressing issues that differentiate this insect from the previous one.  Tropical climate is humid, very very humid.  Now if you go from a cooler environment and into a tropical humid environment (typically when you go into a zoo or hermitage of some sort).

The first thing that will happen is that your lens will fog up.  That is simply the humidity in the air settling on your cooler lens, just as on a class of cold beer during summer.  Now don't wipe that away with a hanky, because it will just fog up again and you'll probably leave some dirty residue on the lens.  What you need to do, as so often in photography, is wait.  When your camera lens reaches roughly the same temperature as its surroundings it will stop fogging.  Typically a few minutes in this setting, use that time to find good locations.

So once the condensation stops all you have do do is shoot.  Remember though that tropical forests and tropical zoos etc. are very shaded.  In fact, if you haven't experienced it before, you're probably going to be surprised at how dark your camera thinks it is.  So you probably want to set your ISO up a few notches.  You'll have to try alternatives, but probably somewhere between ISO 400 and 800 will do the trick.  In addition to make the butterfly stand out you want a wide aperture (f1,4 - f5,6 or so depending on the particulars of your picture).

This picture was taken in the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary in Kuranda, Queensland Australia, i.e. an indoor facility with high humidity.  The lighting there is relatively good (as compared to the real tropical forest in the area) but you need to be on the lookout for sharp rays of light coming through the windows.  While this image is not overexposed you can see a fairly bright spot at the bottom left, this is light from one of the windows.  Generally you'll try to get leaves/trees in the backround, combined with a wide aperture that gives you a nice warm midtone green as a backdrop as in the top part of this photo.

A note on the framing also, note that the butterflies body is aligned along the diagonal and the leaf in front hides the face of the butterfly.  You may or may not like this particular image, but the point is that you don't have to reveal everything, it is ok, and often better, to leave some things out.  The general mistake we all make is to try to include everything all the time, dare yourself to be different.  In this case I get to call my photo "butterfly hiding", which I couldn't if I showed it all, could I?

Feel free to post your own comments below, all rational feedback is appreciated.