It was Spring and time for the yearly drive out to Grand Rapids to drop off my yearly taxes binder to my accountant. As always, my yearly pilgrimage yielded a wealth of butterflies and Chinese lanterns. On the initial trip, I spend an afternoon at the Frederik Meijer Gardens, hunting butterflies with my camera.
This year, the Meijer Garden's cafe played up the Butterflies are Bloomin' event with shortbread cookies.
And there were some really beautiful flower arrangements in the greenhouse and parlor rooms leading up to, and including, the Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory.
This year though, I was in a different headspace. In prior years, I've spent copious amounts of time tracking butterflies, trying to find the correct angle, and waiting for them to spread their wings so I could photograph the vibrant colors. This time, I specifically focused on butterflies with their wings closed. A couple years back, one of my friends did this beautiful colored pencil sketch of a butterfly on a black background. Rather than the usual 'wings out' pose, this sketch had a butterfly with its wings closed. And the black background provided a nice contrast to the colors--they really popped off the page. It made me wonder if I was missing something special with my photographs. Well I wasn't disappointed, especially as this new perspective drew my attention to the shape and form of their wings in addition to some colors and patterns that I had overlooked.
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| Tiger Longwing |
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| Golden Helicon |
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| Postman |
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| Julia |
Of course, I did nab a couple good photos of the butterflies in their 'wings out' mode when the opportunity presented itself.
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| Zebra Longwing |
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| Postman |
And there 'were' opportunities for the obligatory silly pics of butterflies.
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| * nom nom nom* |
But I couldn't leave the venue without taking some photos and videos of the event's motion graphics projection for my class. Between Meijer Gardens and the DIA, I'm harvesting lots of good references where animation and live-action videos are being used to entertain and educate visitors. In my class, we cover a chapter on animation in the art world. Based upon the answers written in the final exam, installations and projections have been difficult concepts to get across to my students. So the more examples I can show them, the better.
