Butterflies in Hyper Color Infrared

Now that the icy grips of Winter and the way-too-wet Spring weather have finally gone away,  it is now the time that photographers like when we can go out and enjoy our passion for photography.  One thing I love to shoot this time of year is Butterflies.  As a photographer they offer a good challenge because they are only stationary for a short period of time.  I decided to go out try some images this last weekend when I realized I’ve never shot Butterflies in Hyper Color. I’ve shot them many times in Super Color, but since I’ve only had a Hyper Color camera a short time this would be a first.  I did all the test images for Hyper Color and was impressed with the results, so I thought it could be a natural for this.    

. . . and it is.

Because of the color palette in Hyper Color, you are capturing Magenta, Red, Blue, and sometimes Yellow.  This created a totally different look from when I shot them in Super Color.  Here’s a Super Color for comparison.

 The Super Color is interesting, but the Hyper Color pulls a different Color Palette that gives the images a little more pop. 

If you haven’t tried shooting Butterflies in Infrared before, let me give you a few suggestions:

• Don’t weigh yourself down with gear.  Pick one lens you like and shoot with that.  I usually go with one of Lensbaby Velvet lenses; the Velvet 56 or Velvet 85.  They are both manual focus lenses, but the have a close focal range so I can get very close up on my subject if they cooperate.

• Be patient.  If your subject stays in one place, make the most of it and shoot.

• Shoot bracketed.    A Butterfly generally moves their wings open and closed.   You can catch several different images in a split second.

• Set your in-camera White Balance to some sort of foliage.

• Your lighting conditions will be constantly changing, so check your preview to see if you’r getting what you want.  I use a Hoodman loupe that works rather well. 

• Try different angles and perspectives.  Don’t just shoot straight down, try and get a parallel angle to the subject.    

In post production, I ran my images thru the RAW editor for my camera, in this case Digital Photo Professional and then worked each of the color tones in Photoshop. 

I found that using Selective Color was a great way to darken down certain colors. 

So, here’s one more thing I like better in Hyper Color than in Super Color. 

Hyper Color had really surprised me. 

If you’d like to see the rest of series, click here.