Red Ginger in Light and Dark

Discovery Gardens in Dallas, Texas

Butterflies!

In preparation for an upcoming โ€œLetโ€™s Grow Togetherโ€ episode for Covington's Nursery (where I teach people how to configure their yards and gardens to attract birds, bees, and butterflies!! ๐Ÿฆœ๐Ÿ๐Ÿฆ‹), we went up to the Texas Discovery Gardens to get b-roll we needed of various butterflies flitting about and doingโ€ฆ you know, just doing butterfly things. ๐Ÿคช๐Ÿฆ‹๐Ÿ˜

๐ŸŽฅ While my friend and producer Eric Johnson recorded the video we needed for the episode, I took the opportunity to flex my photography muscle a bit. There is something very PURIST about photographing butterflies, and I felt a bit like I was back in film school at SMUโ€” where weโ€™d sometimes get an assignment requiring us to simply film something beautiful, in a beautiful and artistic way, for no other reason than just to be beautiful.

If you live near Dallas and have never been to the Texas Discovery Gardens, you should really check it out. Itโ€™s delightful and not very crowded, and in my opinion, a great place for any nature photographer to work on honing their craft while simultaneously photographing a beautiful (but very fast moving) subject.

Also, as you can see, I found the lighting in this space to be very exciting, and ideal for some dramatic experimentation. ๐Ÿคฉ

๐Ÿ“ธ The lens I had with me from a previous shoot was my โ€œPortrait Lensโ€ (and not my โ€œAfrica Lensโ€ lol), but I made it work and shot all this on a canon 70-200. ๐Ÿ“ธ

๐ŸŽถ The music is an original piece I composed and performed a few years back for a completely different purpose, but I thought it worked here nicely. ๐ŸŽถ

๐Ÿฆ‹๐ŸŒŸ๐Ÿฆ‹๐ŸŒŸ๐Ÿฆ‹๐ŸŒŸ๐Ÿฆ‹๐ŸŒŸ๐Ÿฆ‹๐ŸŒŸ๐Ÿฆ‹๐ŸŒŸ

๐Ÿฆœ๐Ÿ๐Ÿฆ‹ And hey โ€”if you want to watch my episode about the โ€œBest Plants for Attracting Pollinators to your Landscape!โ€ here it is! ๐Ÿฆ‹๐Ÿ๐Ÿฆœ

Top Ten Plants for Attracting Pollinators to Your Yard in North Texas