Thursday, November 17, 2011

Butterflies of Manu National Park

Butterflies. Millions of them. Explosion of colors, patterns, and sizes.



As soon as we entered the cloud forest, wherever we stopped, we saw thousands of butterflies: some of them as small as my fingernails, others as big as my hand. All of them totally oblivious to our presence: many of them landed on our food, our clothes or even our heads. It was an absolutely fascinating spectacle, and the photographer in me could not resist the temptation to try to capture as many of them as possible on film.



Photographing butterflies is not easy. First, they seem to be impatient creatures, always in a hurry to find more food or a new place to rest. Second, it seems that they prefer to rest with their wings folded, protecting the beauty of their internal wings from the eyes of the spectators and the camera. For these two reasons, I spent hours and hours chasing them, but it was a very enjoyable and satisfying pursuit. Its results are shown in the photos below.