St. Thomas Butterfly Farm

One of the highlights of my trip was a visit at the St. Thomas Butterfly Farm.  The Farm is located near to the cruise ship dock with easy access from Charlotte Amelie.  To enter the farm you have to go through a few "protocols" that prevent the butterflies from leaving their habitat. Surprisingly, the butterflies bred and cared for on the Farm are illegal in the country. Their continued presence is subject to non-importation regulations.  The Farm itself is quite small and can be visited rather quickly. But for a photographer, the variety of butterflies that flutter around in the most amazing colors and shapes is stunning and most inspiring. Butterflies, classified as insects, have four distinct life stages — egg, caterpillar, chrysalis or pupa, and butterfly.  Butterflies' lives are dedicated to breeding. It's important to watch where you step along the garden's sandy pathways, because it's easy to stumble on a mating pair. Males will mate many times. Females, only once, lay up to 300 eggs before they die. With eggs laid, the cycle of life for the butterfly starts all over again.

Technically, these “creatures” are quite challenging to photograph with a tripod and a macro rail.  It seems that as soon as you are set up and ready to press the shutter, they fly away eager to be courted a little longer.  I spent two hours at the Farm and it was a wonderful experience.  Besides taking butterfly pictures, I also focused my attention on the beautiful flowers located along the garden paths.

US Virgin Islands

Well, 10 days have already past and I am on my way back to Vermont.  The beautiful Islands of St John, Tortolla and St Thomas have provided me with great photo opportunities and a chance to improve my technical abilities.  I have shot medium format as well as 35mm digital and film.  The most important discovery I made relates to my lenses choices and capabilities.  I was surprised to find out that both my zoom lenses (Nikon ED 80-200 2.8 and Tokina ATX Pro 35-70 2.6) performed rather poorly when measured agains my prime lenses.  Using my Mamiya medium format prime lenses with a Nikon adapter on both my digital and film 35mm cameras has really been a dilightful treat:  the sharpness, color, contrast and overall performance was outstanding both with 80mm and 150mm.  These lenses also performed very well for macro photography coupled with Mamiya extension tubes.  One of my goals was to visit the St Thomas Butterfly Farm and take some nice close ups;  the results have surpassed my expectations and the pictures came out great with the Mamiya lenses.  I will upload some of my butterfly pictures in my next post.

I have also improved my abilities at selecting the right speed and aperture for my photo work.  My depth of fields have subsequently improved as well.  Having spent more time on framing the right composition, has also provided me with much more interesting and focused pictures.  My medium format Mamiya has been used mostly for landscape and panoramic shots that hopefully will be "stitched " together for a 360 degree view. The posted sunset picture was taken at Francis Bay with my Mamiya 645 Pro.