Photographing Moths
As it’s been pretty much a year since we started moth trapping, many of the moths we are now getting we have seen before. Whenever I get a new species of moth to the garden I take a photo of it. These shots have been ‘voucher’ shots all taken on the same grey coloured back ground and if possible with a ruler next to the moth for scale.
These photos aren’t the most interesting as the backgrounds are boring and they are intended for identification purposes only. keeping things as consistent as possible between each photo means that it is easier to compare the moths with each other from their photos. I may one day produce several montages of these photos as well so that I can have my own collection cabinet without having actually killed any of the moths! Having consistent backgrounds and lighting conditions will make these look better.
However, now that we are getting the same moths as I’ve already taken voucher shot of, I thought it would be nice to take some more realistic looking photos of the moths with natural backgrounds and maybe from different angles. Unfortunately I’m not retired yet so don’t have much time to do such things but here are a few of a Blair’s Shoulder Knot that I took today. Hopefully you agree that they are much nicer than the voucher shot above.