Broad bodied chaser

[Jerry van Dijk]

This is a broad bodied chaser (Libellula depressa), photographed last year at the university campus. I'm not sure about the square crop I chose. Thoughts and suggestions welcome!

Panasonic DMC-FZ18, handheld, 83 mm (500 mm eq.), ISO-100, F/4.2, 1/1000 sec, EC 0, pattern metering, aperture priority, RAW.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
PP in ACR 5.0 and CS4. CC wise rotation. Levels, sharpness, fill light, clarity. Noise reduction on BG.

[Mitch Haimov]

The crop works for me, and I like the wing detail and the smooth BG. Can you reveal more detail in the face with a curve, perhaps as part of the RAW processing so you have the most information possible to work with? Perhaps next time you can ask your subject to face the sun :w3, thereby lighting the face and removing the specular highlights from the wings? Good job capturing a subject I assume didn't hold still for long!

[Hazel Grant]

Mitchh has said it well. the square crop works for me, too, because it sets a contrast to the strong vertical and angled elements of the photo.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks Mitch and Hazel for your response! I'll try and ask, but I'm not sure if he will be willing to face the sun:bg3:! I tried the fill light slider and a curves adjustment, but all I'm achieving is that the perch starts looking weird. I also had an image with flash to light up the dark areas, but it looked very bad (my pop up flash isn't the best available).

[Gary Esman]

Hi Jerry, nice dragonfly. I have to get out more this summer and shoot some of these. Nice background and colors. To me it seems a little om the soft side, maybe another room of sharpening.

Gary.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Jerry. Good job of getting the whole body within your DOF. The background is pleasingly blurred and I like the comp of the off-center perch and diagonal dragonfly. Mitch has already mentioned the light angle. You might try some dodging on just the head to see if you can brighten it a little. I would wish that we could see the entire head - but some dragonflies like to sit with their wings like this so seeing the entire head becomes a challenge. For me, the large specular highlights on the head and wing are detracting from your image. You could do some careful cloning on the head to remove them, but the wing becomes much more difficult. Sometimes, choosing a slightly different camera angle in the field will solve the problem. :S3:

[bhavya joshi]

Nice details in wings.. Bg and cropping are nice.. I also think more bit sharpness needed..and nice suggestion given by other.. so.. i want to say... keep working..:S3:

[Brendan Dozier]

Nice capture, Jerry. Like the pose, and though crops are always a challenge, this one works pretty well. Agree about a bit more sharpening. Flying insects are not so easy to capture as I'm finding out - I still have yet to get a decent image!

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi all, thanks for commenting. I'll have to watch that angle coming season!
Brendan, although dragonflies are often on the move and are rather jumpy, they have a tendency to follow the same trajectories in flight and often return to the same perch every now and again. They are actually quite predictable. This fellow was continuously on the move, but returned to this perch every one or two minutes, held on for a few seconds and then took off again. I was able to take my time to get in position, and just had to wait for his return. Unfortunately, he was so constant, that he even chose the same angle towards the sun! If you want to have a nice DF image, just find a pond, locate a nice specimen and follow its behaviour for a few minutes. You'll probably be able to locate a good perch and position and get that image that you want. You can even strategically position a few nice perches in the days before and hope they go for it.

[Ken Childs]

Hey Jerry, this one has already been covered well so I won't repeat what's already been said. :S3:

You can even strategically position a few nice perches in the days before and hope they go for it.
If there are a lot of active dragons, you don't have to do this days in advance. I'll add perches and usually dragons will find them in minutes or in some cases, seconds!

[Brendan Dozier]

Thanks for the helpful tips Jerry & Ken


Brendan, although dragonflies are often on the move and are rather jumpy, they have a tendency to follow the same trajectories in flight and often return to the same perch every now and again. They are actually quite predictable. This fellow was continuously on the move, but returned to this perch every one or two minutes, held on for a few seconds and then took off again. I was able to take my time to get in position, and just had to wait for his return.

That's interesting, I was just observing the same type of behavior from this humming bird at the local lake. Love learning stuff like that.

[Adrian David]

Interesting specimen. A little soft for my taste...

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Ken and Brendan, thanks for the additions. Adrian, the image seems to have lost some of its sharpness upon compression for web posting, but I think I'm also pushing the limits of my camera here: about a 30% crop at the longest focal length of the zoom at only 8MP. I'm saving up for a DSLR....:w3