We finally took Quincy to our local Museum of Natural History for the Butterflies Alive! exhibit. It’s been open for months now, and is ending September 21st. They’ve been doing this for years, and my wife and I have never visited. It was actually extraordinarily enjoyable, and I got some pretty nice photos, if I do say so myself. You can check them out on Flickr.

The whole thing was pretty cool. They had this very large screened in area with blowers and double doors at both the entrance and exit. This was of course to prevent any butterflies from escaping. Once inside, they had lots of plants and a great garden feel. Of course, Quincy was more interested in the many fountains than in the actual butterflies which we were there to see! Go figure!

Not long after we arrived a group of women and girls arrived together, and a bit of a commotion ensued. Apparently one of the butterflies had decided that the womans hair was an excellent place to disguise itself! I got a couple shots, but my instinct to kneel when shooting Q or the butterflies got the better of me, I should have gotten a more arial angle! Really, there is a butterfly on top of her head, just click the picture to see it bigger.

Once we left the butterfly exhibit Q was pretty much done, and he made that very apparent. We did manage to grab a few shots of him in some of the gratuituous cutouts though. Unfortunately, after we got those shots, I dropped the flash I’d been using handheld to illuminate my shots. It wasn’t a very long fall, I lost my grip of it from about hip height (maybe 3ft tops) and even slowed it’s decent by gently “catching” it with my foot, kinda like a hackie sac stall, before it hit the ground. No parts flew off, there were no cracks, overall it seemed rather uneventful. Imagine my surprise when the thing wouldn’t turn on anymore! Evidently, this is a resonably common problem with the Nikon SB-600, as a quick google search revealed several accounts of people having this problem even without having dropped it. I think I may be dismantling the thing and taking a look soon. Meanwhile I’ve only got a single light which I can only use in manual mode with my camera. :-( If all else fails, I suppose I’ll be hitting up an authorized service center.

All said, it was a very enjoyable day. For this face, it’s worth it!