Butterfly liftoff

[Barbarian]

[JudyB]

You must have been in a meadow to got these awesome photo's. 

Any idea of the name of this one?

[Al Moak]

Did you retouch this one?  I was wondering how you got the background to fade out.

[Barbarian]

Actually, I was tramping around in the Trinity River bottoms, looking for herons.   But I found this patch of flowers, and butterflies in it. 

All I had was a long telephoto zoom.   So I focused as close as I could, at as fast a shutter speed as I could.   And that cut the depth of field down so that it blurred out the background.    A good effect, under the circumstances.

If you shoot very close at a very fast shutter speed, you have to open the diaphragm up to let more light in.   And the wider the diaphragm, the more narrow the depth of field.   And that is what blurs background, particularly when you are focusing as close as you can.

[JudyB]

Boy that is technical!