My mourning cloak of many colors

Images taken in a controlled environment or with a posed subject. All subject types.

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MarkSturtevant
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My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Although photographed outdoors, these are staged shots so it seems appropriate to put this here.

For me, one of the most coveted of all butterflies is the elusive mourning cloak butterfly (Nymphalis antiopa). They are probably far more common than they seem, but these butterflies favor wooded habitats, and they do not generally visit flowers where they would be easily spotted. Instead, they prefer to feed on sap flows from trees, and most of a tree will be well above eye level so people don’t see the majority of them. When I do see one it is usually flying somewhere in a hurry, and so I don’t have many pictures. It is for these reasons that mourning cloaks are among the most coveted of all butterflies.

Last summer I was delighted to find several mourning cloak caterpillars wandering in the back yard, and climbing the house siding to pupate. They probably had come from the massive cottonwood tree that we have. So I collected them, and had a great time getting my mourning cloak fix with staged pictures.
First up is a wandering caterpillar.
ImageMourning cloak caterpillar by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

Next is a chrysalis.
ImageMourning cloak chrysalis by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

And finally, one of the recently emerged adults. After a butterfly or moth emerges and expands their wings, one can generally count on an hour or two where they are still not inclined to fly, making staged shots easy. These pictures were subjected to a bit more post processing with layer masks to help enhance particular details.
ImageMourning cloak butterfly by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
ImageMourning cloak butterfly by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

The picture below is a really a bit of post-processing whimsy. The original background was quite dark and fairly plain, so I enhanced it with a bokeh filter, and then put the tree trunk and butterfly back with a layer mask. I can certainly describe details if anyone is interested.
ImageMourning cloak butterfly by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

Thanks for looking!
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Lou Jost
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Re: My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by Lou Jost »

These are beautiful, Mark. Excellent light-touch post-processing. I would be one of the (probbaly many) people who would like to take you up on your offer to give more details about how you did the last shot.

MarkSturtevant
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Re: My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Thanks, Lou! I have only recently been able to get my head wrapped around layer masks. For some reason it took a long time for this basic thing to "click" with me.
So I still am sticking with Gimp to most of my processing, since I know it very well. For any of the butterfly pictures, layer masks were used to separately adjust a few things for the tree trunk (enhance colors a small amount with the chroma slider), and the butterfly (use the curves tool to help bring out more details in the lighter and darker areas. Also unsharp mask).
But meanwhile there are all these special filter effects that I've never tried in Gimp, and then there is a plug-in for Gimp called G'Mic. The G'Mic plug-in has over 500 special filter effects (!). Amazing for free software. Anyway, one of them was a bokeh filter. I understand this sort of thing can be found in some other programs. It took me a while to figure it out (there are no manuals for G'Mic. Hundreds of tools; you are on your own!) But there are lots of sliders that set things like the sizes, range of sizes, # of sides and shapes of the bokeh bubbles, etc. and you can just scroll thru and try random arrangements until you see a bokeh pattern that you like.

Anyway, here is the original of that last picture, straight-out-of-the-camera.
https://scontent.fdet1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/ ... e=6079F273
Besides cropping, etc. I lightened the image, and then found a bokeh pattern that I liked well enough, and put it into a copy of this picture. I then used a layer mask to put the butterfly and tree trunk on top of the bokeh layer. That was a bit tedious, since I had to make a mask around all the hairs and scales around the edges. Oy!
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Lou Jost
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Re: My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by Lou Jost »

I had to make a mask around all the hairs and scales around the edges. Oy!
Well done. Thanks for the interesting information.

Tonikon
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Re: My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by Tonikon »

They are all beautiful, but the chrysalis is even more beautiful!

Pau
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Re: My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by Pau »

Excellent work, Mark!

And a free Biology lesson :D

(I've edited your last post to show the unprocessed image link)
Pau

MarkSturtevant
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Re: My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Pau wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 1:25 am
Excellent work, Mark!
And a free Biology lesson :D
(I've edited your last post to show the unprocessed image link)
Thats' ok, certainly. What I did was to make an img url from an old Facebook page that Ive been lately using to post pictures from sources other than Flickr. Sort of as an experiment to see if that would work. If that is not kosher, then I apologize.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

rjlittlefield
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Re: My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by rjlittlefield »

MarkSturtevant wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 8:56 am
If that is not kosher, then I apologize.
There's no rule against linking to images hosted elsewhere. People do that part regularly, for example to Flickr. I did see the image while it was inline. For me it displayed OK, albeit quite large because it had been auto-sized to fit the width of the page and thus extended over a couple of pages vertically. Maybe Pau saw that, or maybe there were other issues, which could be browser-dependent. Anyway, no worries.

On a different angle, thanks for the great images that prompted some equally great memories! I've had the pleasure of rearing mourning cloaks a couple of times. One of them was from a cluster of early instar larvae on a weeping willow tree in my backyard. At other times, the same willow was host to a local population of large sphinx moths (Pachysphinx), which I also reared several times. The big amusement with Pachysphinx was to tether fresh females inside a screen cylinder with open ends, and let them call in wild males for mating. The willow also hosted carpenterworm moths, probably Prionoxystus robiniae. But the willow is gone now, replaced by some hornbeams that apparently don't host anything that lives around here. I'm glad to hear that your cottonwood is still doing well!

Thanks also for the example and explanation of background editing. I agree that it's a significant improvement.

--Rik

Pau
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Re: My mourning cloak of many colors

Post by Pau »

The image just didn't show and the link didn't work, so I took a look at the post text and removed the img tags, this way the working image link can be clicked.
No kosher stuff involved :D
Pau

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