I have always admired my friend Cindy D’s photos of an unusual dragonfly that she has featured in her postings. He is called a Halloween Pennant dragonfly (celithemis eponina).
Wikipedia has some interesting information about this dragonfly including the fact that, “Sexual activity normally occurs between 8 and 10:30 am.” Who knew? I imagine there are scientists somewhere keeping track of the mating habits of the different species of dragonflies using stopwatches.
Today I was happy finally to see a Halloween Pennant dragonfly at Brookside Gardens and take some photographs of him. I love this shot but his wingspan was really wide. I decided to crop out part of the wings so that you can see the details of his face and his wings. I find that dragonflies have wonderfully expressive faces and didn’t want you to miss this face. How can you not love such a face?
I’ll soon be on the lookout for new dragonflies to photograph. Do they have one named for all of the American holidays?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Great depth of field on this one! Nice shot!
Thanks, Dan. That’s one of the things I am trying to work on (I’m new enough to shooting these kinds of photos that it doesn’t come automatically yet–I have to think consciously about aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focus, etc).