Recently I went on a photo shoot at The Butterfly House in Chesterfield, MO. It’s been several years since I purposely shot photos with my prosumer camera. (as opposed to accidentally shooting photos with it…?) I’ve often had issues finding interesting topics around the St. Louis area, because I live here and have done all that, so I’m usually more successful taking photos on trips than back at home.
The last time I was at the Butterfly House was when my son was very small, so I figured this was a good subject to tackle for this shoot. I spent a couple hours there and witnessed the same excited reactions from other little kids as my son experienced so many years previous. It was nice going down memory lane as I was there. As expected, the butterflies were numerous and often not very stationary.
One particular blue butterfly caught my attention. With a wingspan of 4-5″, it was the largest of any of them there. I made it my mission to take a photo of this thing before I left, but it was incredibly elusive and never landed on anything for me to shoot it. There were easily forty of these flying around, and not one of them cooperated with me. Sometimes one would taunt me and fly around acting like it was about to land on a nearby flower, only to pull away and change directions at the last second.
After about an hour unsuccessfully capturing this moment, I prayed, “God, I would really like a photo of this blue one please. Can you get one to cooperate so I can get my shot?”
About five minutes later my prayer was answered. It wasn’t close, but it stayed down long enough for me to shoot two long lens photos of it. Todd, I hear you asking, why are you showing a picture of this butterfly when it’s not blue? Yeah, well… this -is- it. What didn’t happen was have its wings open up, so all I saw was the underside, which definitely was not blue.
So my prayer was answered, but at that moment I felt God say, “Oh, you wanted a photo of the BLUE side? Well you didn’t ask for that!” Sometimes in prayer, you have to be very specific with your needs, otherwise, as my wife and I like to put it, sometimes you hear God say “HA.”
Thanks for reading! To see more photos taken during this shoot, visit my PHOTOGRAPHY page and look under the NATURE section!
Todd