Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly

[Stephen Stephen]

Until last week I did not have any images of these beautiful damselflies in my collection. While on Ontario's Bruce Peninsula along Georgian Bay I stop to photograph visited a small stream alongside a country road. I noticed one of these damselflies flitting about so I waited for one to return. Within 20-30 minutes nearly 20 of these damselflies were flying around in a mating ritual. After a couple would join briefly the female would begin laying eggs in aquatic plants.

Most of the insects were far down the stream but a couple flew by and some landed close to me. I created this image when this pair (male on the left) landed on some leaves nearby. I had to crouch down in an awkward position to try and create this image. As a result it's not a sharp as I would have liked.

As an aside the Bruce Peninsula is the only place on Ontario where Massasauga Rattle snakes are found so I also was careful about where I was placing my feet and hands. :D

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT, Sigma 105mm F 2.8 Macro lens with flash for fill.
ExposureTime - 1/200 seconds
FNumber - 11
ExposureProgram - Manual control
ISOSpeedRatings - 400 Flash - Flash fired, Compulsory flash mode

Image cropped to about 50% of full frame.

[Don Lacy]

These Damsel are beautiful wish you could have gotten some frame filling images, while you handled the high sun angle well with the exposure it would have been nice if you could have gotten the flash at a lower angle to get some light on the Damsel's bodies.

[Stephen Stephen]

Thanks Don. I actually have a couple of close-ups of some of the damsels so I may post another image later.

I agree about the flash but I was shooting in between other branches and leaves so my flash angle options were extremely limited. I may have also had the flash intensity dialed down too low (-1) for the sun intensity.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Stephen,
These are tough.....to get the irredescence to really come through the light needs to be softer.......pumping up the flash may have helped there but still a tough one. I would have preferred a more muted BG.....but you take what you can get sometimes. Looking forward to the closer/solo shots.

[Julie Kenward]

I agree with Roman - I think the time of day and the position of the sun is more against you for the flash to really be of help but I wonder if you shot these in RAW format if you couldn't bring up the dark tones in the BG just a bit more to lessen their impact? Also, I probably would have gone with a lower aperture - maybe f5.6 or so - in order to avoid so much of the BG being in focus. Still, you got really nice detail in both dragonflies. Can't wait to see the close up images!

[Stephen Stephen]

Thanks Roman and Julie. I do agree that lighting for the time of day was not ideal but that was when I saw them.

Julie I always shoot in RAW so I can certainly time some experimentation on the tones. If I had stronger PS skills I'd be in a better position to improve this image. As far as the aperature I did struggle. during teh shoot. Sometime the damselflies would land within inches of my position for a few seconds and othertimes within feet. I wanted to get some DOF for the close-ups but I guess that I forgot to pay enough attention of the same thing for the more distant images like this one.