June 5, 2009

Brazos Bend State Park #9


Again, I have no idea what kind of dragonfly this is other than it’s a blue one with green eyes.  At first, I was hoping that the dragonfly reverse it’s position so that I could include its eyes in the photo.  Then, I decided that I wanted to make the photo about how delicate the wings seem to be.  I tried various positions and finally decided on this one.  I think it shows the delicate nature of the wings very well.

I do wish that I had chosen a smaller f-stop, say a f/16 so that the tip of the tail would have been in focus, but, regardless, I like the shot and believe that it does what I wanted it to do.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D700, Nikon 300mm f/4 with a 1.7x Nikon Teleconverter and polarizing filter attached, shot at ISO 200, f/9.5 and 1/350th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, clarity.

Photoshop—sharpened dragonfly using high pass in hard light mode.

3 comments:

  1. This is another very good image; and yes, you have tons of details in the wings. Nice job. If you ever have time to play with PhotoShop I wonder how the image would look if you removed the part of the stem that curls down to the right. It's dark and grabs a little attention away from the dragonfly.

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  2. I have not seen many photos of dragonflies from this view. It is different, but still pleasant. You did get all the details in this little guy.
    Debbie

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  3. I like the colors and the details in the wings.

    Obviously, even using a longer lens with a converter from further back you have limited depth of field. Because of the angle you took it's less than the total length of the dragonfly.

    You can see that the tail and the upper right portion of the wingtip is out of focus. Moving around to the right a little would have solved the wingtip issue but also created a different angle of the dragonfly that you may not have wanted. Considering how flighty these things are you did well to get it this good.

    I too would like to see the curving stem out of the picture. It really draws my eye away from the main subject.

    DHaass

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