Dragon Fly's

[deetheturk]

A couple of recent Dragon Fly's, which are also another first for me in my photography journey C&C Welcome!


#1


#2


Cheers David

[Shadowman]

Nice captures.

[John 2]

Nice images David. I particularly like the first.

[TonyW]

David, you really are consistently good with these pictures. The first one appears to be missing a leg.

[CBImages]

Tony

I actually count 6 legs, or parts of legs at least.
You actually make a very good point, these dragonflies are so aggressive that they do great damage to each other when fighting over territory. It's not uncommon to see individuals with damaged wings, legs missing and they have even been recorded as flying without heads. YES they can live a short period of time without their heads!
This is because they don't have a centralised Brian like we do, obviously they can't feed or see where they are going but it shows the damage they can do to each other.

[CBImages]

Tony

I actually count 6 legs, or parts of legs at least.
You actually make a very good point, these dragonflies are so aggressive that they do great damage to each other when fighting over territory. It's not uncommon to see individuals with damaged wings, legs missing and they have even been recorded as flying without heads. YES they can live a short period of time without their heads!
This is because they don't have a centralised Brian like we do, obviously they can't feed or see where they are going but it shows the damage they can do to each other.

[jprzybyla]

Hi David, nice dragonflies. I love the colors, the blue eyes on the second really stand out. When not photographing birds I love capturing images of dragonflies and butterflies. I see a couple ways to improve the images. First is the depth of field, the tails are in soft focus not sharp like the rest of the dragonfly. With the lens I use, the Nikon 70-300mm I need to use F/16 at the minimum focusing distance of about 5 feet for all of the dragonfly to be in sharp focus. A second suggestion is to watch and pay attention to the angles of shooting. Explore if by changing position a better background can be found. There needs to be separation between the dragonfly and whatever the background will be, be it sky or vegetation. The ideal situation is to find a dragonfly on a single stem and then look for a angle to give a clean background. Below is an example of one I recently shot where I had to kneel and shoot up towards the sky for a background.



Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis)

Nikon D7000
Nikon 70-300mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF shot at 300mm (450mm FFE) at the minimum focusing distance of 5 feet
1/640 F/16 ISO 1000

[bnnrcn]

Very interesting creature which can survive for sometime without a head . I love the colours and composition in #1 and blue eyes are stunning in #2 #2 says 'don't mess around with me , otherwise...'

[deetheturk]

Cheers John.

[deetheturk]

Thanks for commenting John

[deetheturk]

Cheers Tony, much appreciated bud, I can count six legs?

[deetheturk]

Thanks Chris, wow, I never knew that, headless, I'm glad they don't mind us lot

[deetheturk]

Cheers Joe, and thanks for the great tips and advice, these were shot in a neighbors back garden with my 100mm macro lens so good depth of field was never going to happen( i was trying for head shots anyway) I agree about backgrounds but again being in a back garden you are very limited

Looking at your image it sure makes sense to use a long lens and try hard for a clear background

Cheers David

[deetheturk]

Thanks Binnur, they must be tough chaps to endure such injuries and still fly