Dragonflies on Parade

Yesterday I went for a personal photowalk at Riverside Park in Roswell Georgia.  I didn’t have a particular plan when I left, really I just went to practice and find something different to shoot…and I found it.  There were dragonflies everywhere!  I love them and I’ve always admired the amazing shots of them that I’ve seen around the web, on Flickr and in books. I figured I would never be able to get pictures anywhere near those….but I was wrong…sort of.  These images still aren’t at the level I’d like to eventually achieve, but I think they are pretty good for a first attempt.

I will say that I was really lucky, in that just last week I had read a few articles in Amateur Photographer about shooting Dragonflies and the trick to getting them to come to you and sit still for a nice photo session.  Turns out you just find a nice pointy stick and a still little puddle of water where you see some dragonflies hanging out.  Poke said stick into the ground a few inches into the water, set up your camera, point, focus and wait…if you build it, they will come.  The only tricky bit is being sure that you are on the “correct” side of the stick.  Just step back and wait a few minutes to see which way the dragonflies face when they land on the stick and then set up so that you are at their backs.  Otherwise they will see you and avoid landing on the stick. Once they land, you can actually creep up even closer to them for those money shots as long as you are careful and stay out of their line of site.  Cool, hunh?

So here’s what I got on my first day out….I haven’t yet identified all of these, so don’t ask me…but if you know what any of them are, please let me know.  I’ll see what I can find out and update this post as I learn more.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at 4:13 pm. It is filed under Dragonfly, Images, Macro and tagged with Bugs, Dragonfly, Outdoors, Roswell, Summer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.