Halloween Pennant Dragonfly, female

[Allen Sparks]

Canon Rebel XT, Sigma 150mm macro lens, Tamron 1.4 Pro teleconverter
ISO 400, 1/250, f13, hand held, natural light
There was a brisk breeze that caused this dragonfly to keep its wings raised even when perched. The wind also meant I had to shoot alot of frames to get just a few in decent focus.:)

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Fantastic exposure and one cannot ask for a better BG !
Loved those patterns in the wings. Very very neat image Allen.

[Mike Fuhr]

Love dragonfly pics and this is a really nice one. Great background for F/13! You got the best of both worlds -- sharpness and unobtrusive background.

[Peter Farrell]

Excellent, Allen. Great detail, perch and BG. I love how you caught it with it's wings up. I can't remember ever seeing this before. I would be tempted to clone out the left top peace of what its perched on.
TFS, Peter

[Ken Childs]

She's a beauty and she was well captured.
A slight color boost to the eye might help, just to help it stand out from the similarly colored BG.
BTW, wings up is a normal pose for this species.

I was just about to post a shot of the same species when I saw your shot. I'll save it for another day and will post something different.

[Vida van der Walt]

Beautiful image Ken. Love the wing vein detail, great bg and pose. I would maybe do a slight selective sharpening on the eye and thorax.:)

[Don Lacy]

Wonderful image Allen, nice Bg which compliments the DF and a decent perch which is half the battle when shooting DF images. Like Vdia the first thing I notice was that it could use some selective sharpening on the head and wings so I brought it into PS and ran it through my normal DF sharpening routine let me know if you like it. Also one last thing if look on the bottom of the thorax you see what looks like a small round object that is actual a parasitic Mite in case anyone was wondering.

[Julie Kenward]

Allen, another winner. I do like Don's repost for the sharpening effects but you did an outstanding job of capturing the perfect DOF and getting a beautifully complimentary BG. It's one humdinger of a dragonfly photograph.

Only thing I see that might make it stronger for me would be less room behind and a bit more in front of the DF.

[Allen Sparks]

Yes Don, I really like your repost - makes the DF pop alot more. I use Photoshop Elements 6 so don't know that I have the same sharpening tools you use. Can you share more about your sharpening technique?

[Cindy Mead]

pennants are always so much fun to shoot.. remarkable details Allen and your dof is excellent. The colors really pop against the clean bg, very well done!

[Don Lacy]

Yes Don, I really like your repost - makes the DF pop alot more. I use Photoshop Elements 6 so don't know that I have the same sharpening tools you use. Can you share more about your sharpening technique?
Allen, I am currently using Photo Shop CS3 ( will probably upgrade to CS4 when I get a new Mac soon:D) and Photo Kit sharpening plugin http://www.pixelgenius.com/products.html. My normal sharpening workflow is as follows after converting the RAW file in ACR and opening it in PS I use Photo Kit to apply capture sharpening before I start working on the image. When I am fininshed with my adjustments I flatten the layers and size the image for the web I then use a duplicate layer and the Smart Sharpen filter to sharpen the overall image normal settings will be around 40-50 for the amount and 1 for the radius this will change depending on the image. I will then use fade filter command found in the Edit drop down menu and chose the luminosity mode. Next I will use a Layer Mask to apply the sharpening only to the subject and not the BG, I will then use Photo Kit again to do selective sharpening on the eye and wings. I know this sounds like a lot of steps but in practice it only takes a few minutes and as you can see makes a huge difference in the presentation of the image. When I first started learning PS I struggled with sharpening and bought Photo Kit to help me out and while I have learned to do must of what it does in PS it does such a nice job and is so easy to use it is the only plugin I still use on every image. Allen I have never used Elements so I am not familiar with what tools it has but if it does not allow the use of Layers and Curves I would highly recommend upgrading to CS4 and taking the time to learn how to use it.

[Mike Fuhr]

Also one last thing if look on the bottom of the thorax you see what looks like a small round object that is actual a parasitic Mite in case anyone was wondering.

Thanks Don. I was wondering about that the first time I looked at this image. A stowaway!

[Allen Sparks]

Thanks Don...an upgrade to CS4 may be in my future.:)