Photographing the elusive Western Tiger Swallowtail
August 20, 2012
We have a noticeable dearth of images of Western Tiger Swallowtails on our website, and we recently needed a good photograph of a Western Tiger Swallowtail to accompany a local article we are writing. We have this low resolution image submitted by Cathy in 2005 and this image from Erika also from 2005. There are no shortage of Western Tiger Swallowtails at our Mount Washington WTB? offices, but it seems they only ever soar through the garden and they never alight on any of the nectar producing flowers growing there, including zinnias, butterfly bush and lantana. We spent about two hours today with the camera pre-focused at fifteen feet, the shutter set at 1/250 to stop movement and the aperture at f/16 to maximize depth of field. We even used the motor drive function and the best we could do was this slightly blurry action photo despite taking about 100 photos. We will continue to try to get a sharp, high resolution image of a Western Tiger Swallowtail, but if any of our readers has an image of their own they would like to submit, we would be greatly appreciative.
