Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly

Went to The Gap in Sydney on Wednesday evening for sunset and had an unsuccessful photo shoot.  I tried to implement Hyper Focal Distance technique looking up the Harbour for a shot of storm clouds over the City and the Harbour Bridge using 3 shot bracketing for HDR but only the silhouetted trees in the foreground were anywhere near sharp so I ended up with nice enough compositions but the cityscape was too fuzzy for my liking.  I will have to go back soon and try again.

On a better note, on Thursday evening my wife told me she had seen a butterfly caught up in a net she had draped over a lemon tree in our backyard.  The net is to protect the fruit from possums and birds.  I went to investigate and slowly persuaded the female Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly to come into a pet-tank I have for such events and we both enjoyed a good night's sleep.

Early this morning (Friday) while the butterfly was still calm before warming up in the morning sun I set up my light box outside on a table and adorned it with a few bottlebrush twigs before letting the butterfly onto the flower and took the above photos.  It remained there posing for me for about 15 minutes before slowly taking to the air where it circled a couple of times as if to say "goodbye" and flying off.

I have in fact been watching perhaps this same butterfly for about a week hoping to get a chance with her.  It was a wonderful experience, almost as though she was enjoying it as much as I and I'm glad I didn't resort to the trick of putting the creature in the fridge.