Butterflies

Spring. You can smell it in the air, or so they say. Spring still feels like such a long way away. To celebrate the vernal equinox, I felt that it would be appropriate to talk about butterflies, and specifically, the butterflies we see here in Ontario. This spring, the ROM will publish the fifth book in a series of field guides of the various critters who call Ontario home. This  book is the Butterflies of Ontario. The images have been gathered from many sources, but around 200 specimens from the ROM's extensive collection had to be photographed in both dorsal and ventral views. I have a fairls simple, repeatable set-up to acomplish this. Because a white background is needed, a light table is used. A main light provides texture, while a fill light fills in the shadows created by the main light and, giving a nice, even overall light. The back light is just bright enough to give a clean white background without causing flare around the specimens.