Monarchs flying around you are hard to see. They are fast, and leave you with flashes and glimpses of gold when backlit by the sun.
Some of my favorite images of them are abstracts, like this one. I used a long lens to shoot into an area of flying monarchs and hoping I would get something that looked good. I pre-focused manually so the monarchs in the back were round dots, and hoped I could catch one in the foreground.
Abstract of monarch butterflies in flight amidst oyamel fir trees, El Rosario, Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, Mexico. Canon 7D Mark II. 400mm. ISO 2500. f/4 @ 1/3200 sec.
