Ones that got away!!
Every time I go away and take lots of photos of Butterflies there are inevitable problems. In Tenerife I lost a film, in the Pyrenées my 210mm lens ceased functioning etc.. The Atlas mountains produced their problems, I managed to knock the camera into program mode and massively overexposed two lots of photos, both of species I really wanted to get good pictures of. I've included them here for the purpose of showing what happens if you don't concentrate!
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| As slide | Equalised in Photoshop |
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My first near miss is the Desert orange tip Colotis evagore.
My second escapee is the Spotted adonis blue Lysandra punctifera. I chased them for an hour or so at quite high altitude in 45º C of heat which was really unpleasant, and this is the best I managed, a windswept singleton! |
| And finally.. This is a Southern gatekeeper, Pyronia cecilia, shot through a wire mesh fence. There was a beautiful patch of untouched rough ground with lots of flowers and shrubs amongst the overgrazed fields on the edge of the Toubkhal Massif. It was covered in butterflies, but we were informed it was the local cemetery and strictly no admittance, so this is as close as I was allowed to go! |
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