i had a nightmare last night where the monarch butterfly failed to develop properly. i was relieved when i woke up and realized it was only a dream. the first thing i did early this morning was to check up on the monarch. surprisingly, it was still in the chrysalis, though now the shell was entirely transparent.

i then spent the next 2 hours photographing the final stage of the chrysalis. it wasn't easy to get a good exposure as the pupa was completely black at this point with orange and white spots on the visible wings. at one point i moved my whole photo setup into the living room as it was brighter than the kitchen. i accidentally knocked the lid off the perch of jars, the chrysalis clattering onto the coffee table. had my nightmare come true? i quickly picked up the lid with chrysalis, inspecting it for damage. i saw none. i then moved everything back into the kitchen was it was easy to work from the countertop. that's when i saw it: the papery clear shell on one side of the chrysalis was broken. frantically i looked for some of additional damages. the chrysalis wasn't oozing any liquids, which was a good sign. other than the shell - which was due to come off at any moment now - the butterfly seemed fine. but it did leave me worried, that i possibly killed another monarch butterfly.

as i couldn't be monitoring the chrysalis every second waiting for the butterfly to hatch, i decided to rig up a time lapse camera to capture the event in case i missed it. i'd thought of it a few days ago, and originally i was going to use my SJ4000 action camera, but the field of view was too wide and the chrysalis appeared too small. plus the quality wasn't the greatest.

fortunately i had a second option: my oneplus one phone. i experimented with the time lapse video feature when i first got the OPO. the only limitation on the built-in camera app was that the screen would still be on, thereby draining the battery. so i went in search of a better third-party app. there were a lot of free time lapse apps in the google play store, but all of them were crippleware of some sort. i finally decided on framelapse, spending $2.99 for the pro version that allowed me to sleep the screen while it was shooting. i'd only discover later that sleep mode only dimmed the screen, so it was still draining the battery, just not as quickly. fortunately i had a portable 6000mAh battery pack i could use (though i could've just plugged the phone into a wall charger instead, though the battery pack gave me more mobility).