The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: I got out my favourite macro lens and mulled over the theme. What’s a good creepy crawly? It’s got to be a butterfly. Chasing their flitting colourful wings at the Future Gardens Butterfly World Project I came across these tiny evil looking caterpillars destroying a red flowered passion vine. Eating this apparently makes them taste as bad as they look! And finally the ugly - the chrysalis looks dry and dead with horns and strange metallic patches, while inside a transformation occurs. Together my images show the three stage life of the Zebra Longwing (Heliconius charithonia) from a munching caterpillar, through an ugly chrysalis to a beautiful butterfly.
The results will be printed in the December 2009 issue of Practical Photography.