Photographing Insects: Night Moths

How to spot and shoot these beautiful creatures

A Grey Pine Carpet. The pattern on the wings is beautiful. A top-down shot helps to show this. Photo by the author.

There are lots of different species of night moths, worldwide some 165,000; many more than there are butterflies. But during the day you hardly ever see them. I went to a night moth counting evening, photographed many different ones, and got hooked.

An extended version of this article has appeared in my free book My Journey into Insect Photography that you can download here.

In the Netherlands alone, there are over 2,000 species of night moths (called night butterflies in Dutch) while there are just 53 species of day butterflies. You might see some night moths during the day (there are day-active night moths) but most you can only spot after dark. This requires some special preparation.

As there are so many different moths, it is hard to identify them. They are divided into macros and micros. The macros are normally larger, but not always. Of the examples in this article, the box tree moth and ermine moth are micros. The others are macros.

Fortunately, I was with a group of experts who often immediately know what moth it is. And there are apps (I use ObsIdentify) that help you with identification.

There were not too many moths the evening I went out. The weather and temperature have a big influence on this. We “only” saw 15 different species. One was rare, so that got people excited. For me, as a photographer, it did not really matter. There was enough to photograph.

A Beautiful Hook-tip. This one landed on a little branch, away from the sheet. So best look around using a flashlight. Photo by the author.

Luring moths

There are a number of ways to lure moths after dark. The easiest one is to use a white bedsheet and hang it vertically. Put a strong lamp in front of it. You best use an MF lamp that produces light in many frequencies, or a UV lamp. The lamp attracts the moths, which then land on the sheet and normally stay there for a long time.

However, look around, they might also land on objects nearby. (There is still a lot of debate about why moths are attracted to light. Search for it in Google and you find many different answers.)

After the night moth counting night I decided to create my own setup. I bought a cheap used facial tanner for 7 euros. This produces UV light and is pretty strong, and easy to set up. Together with a cheap bedsheet and an umbrella to protect the lamp from some drizzle, this is what it looks like. Very cheap and effective.

My setup with a cheap, used facial tanner, white bed sheet, and an umbrella for protection. Photo by the author.

The second way is to create some sweet syrup that moths smell and like, preferably with alcohol in it. There are many recipes for this on the web. A simple one is to mix red wine and white sugar in equal quantities. Optionally, you can add apple syrup and a bit of rum to it, to make it even more attractive. Let it stand for a while and you are ready to go. Smear it on some tree stems before it gets dark.

There are also special butterfly traps, also called light traps. They consist of a large bucket with some egg cartons in it and a light above it, with acrylic glass around it. The moths are attracted by the light, land on the glass, fall in the bucket, and hide between the egg cartons. You can leave this out the whole night and then inspect it early in the morning. This is great for counting, but does not work too well for photographing the moths, I think.

A Box-tree Moth. I like this angle for moths and butterflies, in particular when they are standing up a bit from the ground. But for identification such shots do not work well. Photo by the author.

Photographing night moths

Once a moth has landed, it normally stays there for quite a while. So you have lots of time to take a good shot. You can get very close. You obviously need a flash. Also, use a good flash diffuser to avoid hard shadows.

When the moth is on a white background, exposure is difficult. When you use automatic exposure (TTL with flash) the insect will normally become too dark. I use some flash exposure compensation to remedy this. Don’t overdo it though. The white surface becomes too white. Best solve this in post-processing.

When the moth is on some tree, it is often difficult to distinguish it from the background. You can solve this partially in post-processing. But it also helps to take the picture from a different angle, like from the side or from the front. (For identification, a top-down shot normally works best.)

An Angle Shades. A vertical shot here accentuates the shape. The half-black, half-white background was hard to handle, and required some careful post processing. Photo by the author.

Flashlight

Focusing might be hard for the camera if the moth is sitting in a dark spot. Bring a good flashlight. You need a flashlight anyway to find the moths that are not sitting on the sheet.

To take the shot, I hold my camera, with flash and diffuser, with my right hand. With my left hand, I hold the flashlight and I support the bottom of the lens. That gives a pretty stable hold. I point the flashlight at the moth and use that light to autofocus the camera. Then I take the shot with the flash.

Some things you have to be careful about though. Some flashlights pulsate with a certain frequency. This can interfere with the refresh of the viewfinder, leading to a flickering image. It does not affect the autofocus and image, but it looks poor in the viewfinder and is hard on your eye. I also considered using a head-mounted light, but this does not work well with the diffuser I use, as it blocks the light.

A Spruce Carpet, You need a flashlight to focus the camera on the moth. Photo by the author.

Post-processing

These moth images almost always need some post-processing. As indicated above, the background is normally far from ideal. Also, the light attracts many other insects, which can form a distraction in the image. So you need some retouching.

My process for these images is as follows (using ON1 PhotoRAW):

• Cropping. Because of the symmetry of the moth, centering it often looks nice.
• NoNoise AI. Not so much for noise reduction, but for sharpening.
• Developing. This normally requires some care, in particular with a white background. You best make the shadow tones lighter (the moth) while darkening the highlights and whites (the background).
• Retouching to remove unwanted distractions.
• Sometimes I apply a local adjustment to make the moth slightly lighter such that the pattern on the wings is better visible or it stands out better against the background.
• Sometimes I apply dynamic contrast to the moth for the same reason.
• Finally, I add a soft vignette to put more emphasis on the moth.

An Ermine Moth. Look at the roll tongue. This one required special post-processing. In the original image the background was much lighter than the moth. I had to turn that around. Photo by the author.

Conclusions

You can spot and photograph night moths almost everywhere. Your own garden is probably the easiest place. Also, you can find moths almost the whole year around, although most can be seen in summer. Different seasons have different moths. The best weather is warm, humid, and clouded. You need some patience though as some moths only appear after midnight. But you don’t have to stay outside all the time. If you take a look every half hour or so, that is good enough.

Photographing the moths is relatively easy as they do not move around. But making the resulting images look good is harder and normally requires quite a bit of post-processing, to improve the relation between the moth and the background.

Next: Adding a Close-Up Lens

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Mark Overmars is a dedicated insect photographer that loves to share and regularly publishes about his work and about photography in general. You can visit his website at www.insectphotography.org. Download his free insect photography book at www.insectphotography.org/book.