This article shares 13 consecutive images from a 1/4 second dragonfly gift, during which the interactions of 2 dragonflies were captured. These Pro Capture H photographs reminded me how Mother Nature sometimes allows us to witness small glimpses of the magic of everyday life.

Rather than only experience our photographs from a technical perspective, it is important to appreciate the essence of life that our images have captured.

During a recent visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington Ontario I was given this 1/4 second dragonfly gift. What made it noteworthy for me was that my initial objective was to photograph flowers. I had no idea that these dragonflies would even be at the gardens.

As I observed the dragonflies around two decorative ponds, I noticed that one of the dragonflies would come back to land on the edge of a specific leaf. This created a good opportunity to capture some images of it taking flight. So, I set about to attempt this image capture.

I never was able to capture this ‘launching into flight’ behaviour, but was given this 1/4 second dragonfly gift as a second dragonfly entered into my Pro Capture H scene. Luckily my reflexes worked well enough to commit these frames to permanent memory.

I used my standard Pro Capture H settings with both my Pre-Shutter frames and Frame Limiter both set to 15. I shot at 60 frames per second with my first frame locking focus and exposure. All of the 15 frames from this Pro Capture H run were captured in a total of 1/4 of a second.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

Whether I will ever be able to replicate this 1/4 second dragonfly gift that I was given is a question without an answer. What I can say is that I am incredibly grateful to have been given this 1/4 second dragonfly gift as many photographers never receive such a treasure!

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from RAW files using my standard process. Crops are noted. This is the 1,040th article published on this website since its original inception.

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