Photo of the month 

September 2003 

DRAGONFLIES - CU034

Oakland County, Michigan, USA - August

4.0/500mm + 1.4x – ISO 200

Digital Capture 

[1]

During a late summer day a female dragonfly is lying the eggs well protected by the male, which holds her tightly at the head. As she is trying to find a secure spot where to put the eggs the male tries to keep the balance of both animals by sustaining himself by on-spot flight.

I was impressed by the activity of those animals stopped just by the night falling in when the last sun rays leave the pond.

Absolutely fascinating are the wings shining like gold when backlit by the evening sun.

So I decided to capture this situation. I immediately realized that photographing from outside of the water was not leading to the desired results.

Thereby I grabbed my waders again (see picture of the month July 2003...) and choose a low angle view to get also the reflection in the water. My first attempts with the macro 180mm lens were not that much successful as the minimum distance tolerated by these animals was too big for that lens.

So I switched to the "baby" (4/500 mm), put even the 1.4x multiplier on it and went in deep water with the help of a monopod. The lens was 2 centimeters above the water level, so you can imagine how dry my waders were at the end of  this photo sessions...

I moved very slowly in the water to avoid any wake which would disturb the picture and to avoid also any damage to the underwater vegetation.

To capture the blur of the wings I choose a 1/40 sec. shutter speed and to get a good depth of field I set the lens at f/13. More DOF would have produced too much of disturbing detail in background. The ISO Speed was a consequence of the these two settings.

The choice of a monopod was dictated by the need of mobility in a very muddy ground full of weed, albeit with some penalty in overall sharpness.

Without Image Stabilizer this picture wouldn't have been possible, I guess.