Green Darner Dragonflies

[Allen Sparks]

Canon 7D, Canon 300mm f4 IS, 1.4x TC II, HH
ISO 400, f13, 1/400s

Here is a behavioral/habitat shot from this Spring. I darkened the front part of the dead reed the dragonflies are perched on.


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[Steve Maxson]

Hi Allen. Very nice job capturing this egg-laying behavior! The exposure, comp, and sharpness look good and the dragonflies stand out well against the darker background. The one thing that catches my eye is the area of the dead cattail leaf that you darkened (I noticed this before I read your caption :S3:). This looks overdone and unnatural to me - I would suggest that you redo the darkening with the objective of making it look more subtle. Other than this single point, this is very well done!

[Bob Miller]

Allen...nice shot showing behavior with great color and sharpness.You might consider cropping some from the bottom to simplify and remove the reed in the ULC

[bhavya joshi]

Well moment Captured... Love all Technical works. Agree with Above comment, Clean ULC looks good. Nice work.:)

[PRABIR BHATTACHARYYA]

Allen, very nice moment captured! You may think of cropping the green branch/weed in the left of the frame and crop a bit of the bottom.
Overall, this is a great shot.

[Ken Childs]

Allen, you've done a great job of capturing the mating/egg laying behavior of these dragons! The dragons themselves look good and with a couple of minor exceptions, the environment looks good. I agree you should take another shot at the front end of the reed, it looks too clean to be natural. Also that bright green area in the ULC could stand to be darkened so it's not a distraction.

Is the female's abdomen cut off or is that an optical illusion? It looks like it ends where the reed is. It there a hole in the reed?

[Allen Sparks]

Thanks for the useful comments everyone!

Ken, I believe the female is pressing the tip of her abdomen against the reed causing it to sharply bend underwater. I was kind of surprised when I saw this at first.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Excellent shot, I was just going to comment and noticed that Steve took the words right out of my mouth!! The dead reed could be "textured" by cloning some of the speckled area to the plain area.