How to photograph butterflies. Part 7: Moths

Great ash sphynx moth.  Ten lined hawk moth.  Polyphemus moth
Elephant hawk moth.  Eyed sphynx moth.  Garden tiger moth.

Ok, Ok.  Moths aren't butterflies.  And truthfully, they don't behave like butterflies in a few very important ways.  First of all, they tend to lie with their wings flat against their bodies while butterflies keep them vertical above their bodies.  A lot of this is due to their habits where butterflies are diurnal (during the day) and moths nocturnal (during the night) or even crepuscular (dawn and dusk).  Butterflies keep their wings vertical to help radiate heat while moths keep them pressed against their bodies to help keep heat in.  In both cases it is a form of thermoregulation designed to maintain internal temperatures within an optimal range.

Moths also tend to be less conspicuously coloured than butterflies and have patterns and colours to better blend into their surroundings.  They are hard to find during the day as they often hide.  Many moths have no eating parts as they only live long enough to breed.  Some butterflies may live weeks or even months.  There are many more differences, but this is more about photographing them rather than how they are different.

If I am out shooting butterflies, the optimal time is during the day, preferably in the spring or early summer.  Moths, on the other hand, tend to be active on warm evenings.  They use the moon to navigate to fly in straight paths but artificial lights and fires causes disorientation and they end up circling them and even crashing into them.  The advantage here is that you can use lights to attract and capture moths.  Put up a white sheet on a warm night, put a white light on it, and wait a while.  Depending on where you are, you could end up with dozens or hundreds of moths, but no butterflies.  For an example, click here.  

I will often capture a moth early in the morning (like at 4 or 5) and hold it in the fridge (my wife hates it when I do that) and then photograph it later in the morning.  I have caught them when camping outside lit buildings, by light poles, and once I caught a ten-lined hawk moth hovering in front of my honeysuckle bush at dusk.  I have never photographed them at night for obvious reasons; even with flash it can be a pain and I am somewhat adverse to giving up my comfort.

If you keep them in your fridge, do yourself a favour (and your spouse) and deal with them right away.  The longer you leave them, the better they will become at flying away at reduced temperatures.  Take them out, place them on a preferred background, and take a few shots.  You should have a few minutes at best to take photos.  At some point, they will start to shiver violently in preparation to fly.  They are contracting their flight muscles in their thorax to raise the internal temperature.  When they have achieved at least a minimum temperature, they will fly off.

All of the photos are of moths I have caught, cooled down, and shot later.  If you want to shoot them during the day, go to a butterfly garden where they will have several moth species available.  The great thing about moths is that some of them are among the largest insects on the planet.  Have a look at the atlas moth below.  I photographed it while visiting Butterfly World in Victoria, BC.

An atlas moth and my wife, Kathryn, at Butterfly World in Victoria, BC.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com