This past week, while photographing wildflowers in a rainy mist at Prairie State Park, I was hiking through a thick bed of wet clover while making my way towards some Flowering Dogwood trees that were in bloom. While maneuvering the thick clover, I scared up a Clearwing Moth. Being wet and a rainy mist still coming down, the moth did not travel very far before settling back down on the clover. Working slowly, I approached the moth and eased my tripod into the clover. Here are a few of my favorite images of the Clearwing Moth:
Wanting to get a little more depth of field, I captured a series of 15 images and then “focus stacked” them together (using Helicon Focus software) to get this next image:
This was the first-of-year (FOY) Clearwing Moth I have seen … even before my FOY Ruby-throated Hummingbird!
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark 3 body
- Canon EF 180mm, f/3.5 macro lens
- Bogen 3221 tripod and ballhead
- ISO 1250 (all images)
- Aperture f/5.6 (all images except for the bottom, focus-stacked image @ f/3/5)
- Shutter 1/320 sec. (all images except for the bottom, focus-stacked image @ 1/800 sec.)