Butterflies

Butterflies Are Blooming is Meijer Gardens' most popular annual exhibition and the largest temporary tropical butterfly exhibit in the nation. Mingle with more than 6,000 tropical butterflies
flying free in the 15,000-square-foot Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory.

The exhibition boasts more than 40 different species from the Far East, Africa and Central America. Each week hundreds of chrysalises arrive at Meijer Gardens and are painstakingly sorted, inspected, labeled and pinned in their sealed Butterfly Bungalow. The chrysalises are then placed in a special emergence area of the Bungalow where visitors can witness through a window their magical transformation into butterflies!

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Using the Leica M9 with the 35mm Summicron presented huge challenges in this project. (The 50mm would have been a better choice but I didn't have it with me.) Most photographers will opt for telephoto or macro lenses to get close and detailed images of the butterflies, but the idea here was to engage the viewer in the environment too. These images were hand held and cropped extensively so some sharpness is lost,
but as you can see, the poetic motion of these magnificent creatures was preserved.

Leica M9 35mm Summicron

@ 2013 Photo Pro - Jeffrey P. Hopp