Club Tailed Dragonfly

[John Robinson]

Gomphus vulgatissimus
One of our specialities here near the River Severn This one turned up in my garden
D7000
500 ISO
200 th sec @f16 Probably on board flash but exif doesn't show it.
Sigma 150mm macro. Slight crop.
Cheers
JohnR

[Diane Miller]

Wonderful sharpness, contrast and color!! Lovely reflections on the wings!

What would you think about a tiny crop from both top and bottom, to get rid of the edge of the leaf bottom center and the other leaves branching off from the main one, top center?

[John Robinson]

Thanks Diane
Good idea -will do. Just noticed the leaf vein going downinto the head too !
Pulls the eye a bit. Will sort out later. Thanks for looking.
John

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nice shot John, the direct flash if used tends to reflect off the wings, if I can get away without flash on dragons I do so for this reason.

[John Robinson]

Heres a repost
Jon - funny how some like reflection others don't. Judging by the shadow I may not have used it . Can't remember.
Cheers
John

[Steve Maxson]

Hi John. Looks like a pretty cooperative specimen! I like the revised crop that has cleaned up the top and bottom edges. If this was mine, I'd probably crop some from each side to reduce some of the background detail that you got when using f/16 (of course, for a shot like this it's hard to get enough DOF on your subject without also getting a lot of background detail :S3: ). You might also try some NR on the background to smooth out some of the darker greens, in particular.

[John Robinson]

Steve
Thanks
I wouldn't know how to selectively noise reduce just the background. Not in my software without a lot of tracing !! Could do adjustment layers I supose but still got to rub out the dragonfly.
John

[Allen Sparks]

Hi John, Nice head to tail sharpness and the wing tips too. Agree with Steve with cropping some right and left. Nice image either way.
For what it's worth, I do background noise reduction on all images which does require subject selection.

Allen