(See a transcript below)

Photographing Insects Part 1 - Things to thing about

One of my favorite things to photograph is dragonflies in flight. I love the challenge. I love to watch dragonflies. Not only are they colorful, but their large eyes and behavior make them easy to anthropomorphize and think they have personalities. 

The key to photographing them is the same as with all animals.  First you have to find them, and then you have to understand their behavior. Of course a key behavior is flying, so that is what I try to capture. 

To find them, let's do a quick review of what they are. Dragonflies are in the order Odonata. This order includes dragons and damsels.  Dragonflies are the big ones and damsels are the little skinny ones. I am going to ignore the latter the for rest of this discussion.  If you want to photograph damselflies, much of this will apply, but the larger dragonflies are a bigger target.

Dragonflies have a lifecycle where they spend much of their life in water. Although some may be found away from water, near water is the easiest place to find them. They emerge as adults ready to reproduce in large numbers in summer. You may find them laying eggs in the water. So go to your closest pond or lake in July or August.

In the early morning, when it is cooler, they may be perched on reeds and you can get closer to them before they get too skittish.  You can use a macro lens, such as I have with my Tamron 90mm macro. But I prefer to use a long lens, and this will definitely be needed as the day warms up and they are more active. My go-to lens is a Tamron 150-600 which I carry for birds, but my 18-400 will also do.

Some dragonflies behave like flycatchers, flying out from a perch to catch prey only to return to the same spot. They may have a couple of favorite reeds or twigs close by. You can focus on their perch and wait for it to come back.  I try to change the background by positioning myself so that there is not a lot of background distraction. With great patience you can try to release your shutter just as it lifts off or lands. 

Depending on the lens, I use an ISO so as to achieve a fast shutter duration of 1/1600 or thereabouts and a wide aperture of 6.3 to blur the background. I use autofocus with single point focusing for perched dragonflies.

Some dragonflies are more like swallows or swifts. They are constantly flying and catch their prey in flight.  But the thing to know about them is that they are often territorial.  They will fly in the same general area, then come to pause and hover for a few seconds. That is when you shoot. They are slower and you have a larger target when they are mating in flight.

I use a long lens, short shutter duration, and setting as I described, but instead of center spot, I like 9 spot continuous autofocus. Lookup those settings for your camera.

And take a lot of photos. Practice, practice, practice. 

The next step is getting the image off your card and doing something with it. An image ‘straight from the camera’ really doesn’t exist anymore. I shoot raw images and then process them into jpg. I like the term ‘digital darkroom’ because you are doing things to the image digitally that used to be done with chemicals to film.  I use Lightroom to catalog and process my images. Photoshop is more complex, and I am not making major alterations as a rule. Other photo editor software will do also.

I crop my images. I adjust the brightness overall and may lighten shadows or darken highlights. If I have used a high ISO, I will remove noise. And finally, I will sharpen an image. I have recently started using the TOPAZ products as Lightroom plug-ins (they can also be used stand-alone) for sharpening, de-noising, and enlarging images.

There is so much more you can do, but when processing volumes of images, I usually leave it there.

My Related videos:

• A talk on Dragonflies given via ZOOM to PV/SB Audubon https://pvsb-audubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Those-Dashing-Dragons-An-Introduction-to-Our-Local-Dragonflies-with-Kim-Moore-5-18-21.mp4?fbclid=IwAR1Q1lbY3z-ztaXmPRFCLqlqmHxfeFjmvG1M2QYMw54u5bArzeuoDqPSVMw
• Photographing Insects Part 1:  https://kimssight.zenfolio.com/blog/2021/9/photographing-insects---part-1
• Photographing Insects Part 2:  https://kimssight.zenfolio.com/blog/2021/9/photographing-insects---part-2-cameras-and-lenses
• Photographing Insects Part 3: https://kimssight.zenfolio.com/blog/2021/9/photographing-insects---part-3-techniques-and-tips