Macro Photography in the garden

Black Swallowtail caterpillar
Black Swallowtail caterpillar
Black Swallowtail caterpillar
Black Swallowtail caterpillar

Macro Photography
I wish I could say that this guy… gal? Well, I suppose if we waited a few weeks (2-4), we’d know which one. I wish I could say that he was in my garden, but he was in a conservation garden over in Marblehead. I found seven of them in the garden, but when I came back a few days later, there were only six, then zero. (more on that later)

If you are interested in Butterflies and Caterpillars, check my Benable listing with habitat kits, books, and videos.

Either the survival of the fittest rule is playing a part, or one has wandered off to get into his chrysalis and proceed to the next stage, “the Black Swallowtail butterfly”.

Female Black Swallowtail laying her eggs

At first, I thought it might be a Monarch caterpillar, but while similar in coloration, the Monarch doesn’t have the yellowish spots that run the length of the caterpillar’s body.

monarch caterpillar on milkweed

I shot my first shots with just a 24-105 lens, and it did ok at getting a good look at them, but I still had to crop in to see them close up.

Unlike the Monarch, which only feeds on the milkweed plant, the swallowtail has a wide-ranging preference for host plants. You can find them on Fennel, dill, carrot top, or, as in these pictures, common rue.

A warning about Rue

Don’t “Rue” the day you climb into their leafy greens to get a close shot. (You know I had to say that) But I will admit I didn’t know this when I got my tripod and my camera right in close with their habitat.

Rue is not poison ivy BUT! It can make you itch if you are sensitive. If you get an allergic reaction from just looking at poison ivy. Then I would stay away from rue.

Macro shooting Tips

In general, we want to get frame-filling images, and this usually calls for a dedicated macro lens. The minimum distance I can get with my standard lens is about 15 inches. And because it will zoom, it will allow me to not have to switch lenses.

I shot these with a 70mm Sigma macro lens, but I traded that for a 100mm f2.8 IS Canon macro lens.

There isn’t much cropping on these shots. Most of the images are at 100%. I tried to hand-hold my camera but quickly realized I needed my tripod.

There is a problem with this, trying to get your camera in close without disturbing their habitat…

Depth of Field (DOF)

Watch your DOF because macro lenses will easily magnify the “lack” of DOF. Real simply DOF or Depth of Field means exactly that, what depth into the image is in focus.

A lower number for your F-stop means that what is in focus is very limited. and the viewers focus is limited in this case to just the head of the caterpillar. The larger the F-stop, the greater the depth as seen here in the three images.

If you want the whole body in focus, then try to keep the body parallel to the lens. If you place the camera so that you are capturing the caterpillar’s head with the tail off in the distance.

Medium DOF: ISO 500, 70mm (fixed), F11, 1/250th Sec.

In this picture, the head is closest to the lens and the tail is furthest away. Even if I had used an F22 F-stop, it would not have resulted in the full caterpillar being in focus. I included the camera settings under the caterpillar’s image.

So keep the subject aspect to the camera in mind so you can control the DOF and focus correctly on the subject.

Mannerisms of the Caterpillar

As you can see with a couple of the pictures, the caterpillar has spun a belly band after anchoring its toes to the branch. With just those two points to anchor him, he will proceed to go into his/her chrysalis phase. (Sorry, no chrysalis pics because a few days later I went back and they were all gone…) 🙁

I hope that someone came by and took them home to raise “safely” in a butterfly enclosure. This is an affiliate link to my Amazon pg on butterfly kits.

Jeff “Foliage” Folger  

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2 comments

  1. Very interesting. I never noticed the yellow dot difference on the caterpillars. I have a friend in SAN Diego who has a monarch sanctuary in her back garden. It’s fascinating to observe. Your macro shots are excellent.

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