This short article shares a small selection of images of a cooperative dragonfly which stayed perched long enough to photograph it.
The image above was captured near one of the ponds at Hendrie Valley. Seeing dragonflies at this location tends to be a bit of a hit or miss proposition. I moved in slowly as not to scare the dragonfly into flight.
This same dragonfly took off and landed back on the same dead branch a few times before it flitted off for parts unknown. I had time to try one Pro Capture H run which yielded the above image.
Later on that same day I was fortunate enough to spot a small dragonfly on one of the pond ornaments in my backyard. Luckily this particular specimen was a poster child for being a cooperative dragonfly.
Over the course of a few minutes it took off and returned about a half dozen times. This gave me the opportunity to change my physical position near my pond, and thus adjust my shooting angle.
I don’t often see any dragonflies around my pond so I contemplated trying to capture it in flight using Pro Capture H. Unfortunately it flew immediately away from my camera so I did not get any usable images.
On the positive side, during one of its landings it demonstrated an usual perched position which made for an interesting image.
When I’m out doing bird photography along shorelines with aquatic plants I usually watch for dragonflies. I’ll have to remember to check out my backyard pond more often!
Technical Note
Photographs were captured hand-held using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Photographs were cropped to taste, then resized for web use. Images were produced from RAW files using my standard process.
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