Butterfly
Today’s butterfly is the third and final (for now) installment of the Alan Krause butterfly submissions. This may be another swallowtail like Monday’s.
It is notable that of Alan’s pictures, this one was not his favorite, nor mine… but it is still really outstanding. He really sent some amazing stuff.
As always, you can grab the larger image and use it as a wallpaper.
Thanks, Alan!
peggysue1971 said,
January 30, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
As far as i’m concerned you saved the best for last! I normally am an “earth tones” admirer (browns, golds, yellows, rusts etc.). The splash of “Opera” (Daler Rowney’s watercolor term for hot pink) totally makes this photo not to mention the focusing of the midsection spot on with the foreground and back grounds slightly blurred. I am going to have to re-think my whole attitude about insects. Thank you Alan….and you too Dave.
JFargo said,
January 30, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
Totally my favorite of the three.
On a side note (I know it’s not Friday, but I think you can help me), I’m trying to get over my fear of arachnids as part of my “be a better me” program. Where would you suggest I start?
Or should I just use Google and start looking?
David Brady said,
January 30, 2008 @ 6:35 pm
PeggySue1971: Thank you! It really is a well-composited shot. I almost always crop down the images that are submitted to the site, but the field of green around the red around the butterfly really makes for an amazing shot, so I left it as is. Alan really knows how to composite a shot: I didn’t crop or resize any of his images.
JFargo: I strongly suggest starting at the library. Get a kid’s picture book on spiders, then work your way up. If you Google for spiders, you’ll see like 50% of the images are of spider bites, which can lead you to think that thousands of people are disfigured and killed by spiders every day. It’s more like 4 people per year in the U.S., and that’s from all species of spider combined.
Once you’ve read up on them, go catch some and watch them! I *highly* recommend getting the 1-gallon lizard terrarium from your local pet shop and catching a Phiddipus audax. (Be careful: they bite in self-defense! Catch them with a glass and bit of cardboard.) Then catch some flies and put them in the cage and watch the fun!
If audaxes (Audaxi? Audices?) aren’t your thing, catch a big garden spider. They’ll want the biggest cage you can provide, but they move a lot slower and are less likely to attempt escape while you’re trying to put flies in the cage.
b13 said,
January 30, 2008 @ 7:57 pm
Very nice composition! Definitely the best of the three; but all three are really nice pieces.
tceisele said,
January 31, 2008 @ 3:36 am
And, regarding the spiders, I’d recommend reading the article here:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/Spiders/Agelenidae/BennettVetterCFP.pdf
Brief summary: spider bites are wildly overdiagnosed. The vast majority of those scary-looking necrotic “spider bites” actually have nothing to do with spiders, most of them are one of many types of bacterial skin infections. Actual confirmed spider bites (as in, the bitten person actually feels the bite and sees the spider that did the biting) are, as Dave says, almost vanishingly rare. Keep in mind, doctors receive essentially *zero* training in identifying spider bites, and really are no more qualified to diagnose them than the average person in the street.
tceisele said,
January 31, 2008 @ 7:19 am
Regarding the butterfly, if you look at the trailing edge of the wings, you can see a band of dark blue that isn’t present on Alan Krause’s picture from two days ago. From what I have read, that means that this one was a female Tiger Swallowtail.
AJ said,
January 31, 2008 @ 4:25 pm
Another thing that might help you feel better about spiders, JFargo, is this really nifty website:
http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/
(my husband took a tech support call from the site’s author years ago, and I’ve had it bookmarked ever since. I’m glad to see it’s still around!)
The bright cyan background is a bit much, but otherwise it’s a very cool and informative site that debunks a lot of myths and has a lot of good information.
Alan said,
February 1, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
Thanks for all the compliments, folks. That is the beauty of digital photography - take a lot of shots and only show the good ones! ;>
Alan