Dragonfly Day

[flipmode]

I've been wanting to add some shots of dragonflies to my collection of photos and today was a great day for that.







CC welcome.

[Geoff F]

But the third one is a Damselfly.

Wings held along the body when at rest.

[Dave Humphries]

Nice shots Chris, I prefer the first two, the latter has too much criss-crossing distractions at all image depths for me.

I'd be pleased with them, if I'd taken them.

Warm day here tomorrow, so hoping to get some of my own by the river.

Cheers,

[flipmode]

Thanks for pointing that out Geoff. I'm not too good at identifying insects, other than the obvious.

@ Dave, good point. I didn't even think about that until you pointed it out. Looking forward to seeing your shots.

[Geoff F]

With flowers, etc, you can have a think about composition and move around, or remove, any distracting items like crossing twigs; but with insects, what you first see is what you get!

Sometimes you can clone away a bit of distraction or 'move' it behind the subject with some careful cloning of the subject. But I think that would be a lot of work for little benefit here.

One tip for these long insects is, once you have taken an initial shot, try to get square with the insect so you have the maximum area in focus. And if you scare it away you still have the first shot, or several shots as you attempt to gently change position.

[Dave Humphries]

I endorse all Geoff's advice and add...

Particularly with Dragon and Damsel Flies, if they dart off, keep dead still, they often come back and land where they were before within a minute or so. There will be some shots I got like this today in my thread (coming soon).