Detroit Zoo - flowers and butterflies

The Saturday before mother's day was beautiful out so we spent the afternoon at the zoo.

Flowers are easy to shoot, they like to stay still and pose for you.

Butterflies on the other hand are hard, I could only catch them when they stopped moving.

I started trying to shoot with a telephoto but it had a minimum focus distance of about 3 feet and that just didn't work, so I switched to a macro lens which worked much better, although I still wasn't able to get a good shot of any of them in flight.

The other side of this butterfly's wings were a beautiful purple pattern but I could not catch it with it's wings open. At one point it landed on my left shoulder but I couldn't get the camera pointed at it with only my right hand to get a photo.

Whenever the butterflies got too frustrating I switched back to flowers.

Ok, I slipped a bird in here too since you walk right from the Butter Fly garden into the Aviary.