Walking through the woods today at my local marshland park, I managed to photograph my first damselfly of the spring, what appears to be some type of spreadwing damselfly, possibly a Slender Spreadwing (Lestes rectangularis).
My camera was already on my tripod, with my 135-400mm zoom lens attached, when the damselfly flew by and perched on a thorny vine right in front of me. I decided to try to get a shot and the first thing that I had to do was to back up, because the minimum focusing distance of the lens at full extension is 7.2 feet (2.2 meters). Secondly I had to switch to manual focus—the damselfly is so slender that my camera refused to autofocus on it. Finally, I had to adjust the aperture manually, when I realized that there was a lot of direct light falling on the vine and on the damselfly.
The two shots that I am posting may look like they were taken using flash, with an almost black background, but the damselfly was in a little pocket of light and the rest of the area was pretty heavily shaded.
Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Reblogged this on jessicaslavin.
Those are great shots-I love the black background.
Thanks, it almost looks like a studio setting. When the light shifted, I actually tried to use my flash, but it did not give very good results (and I think that it helped to scare away the damselfly). I haven’t quite figured out the optimal settings when shooting in manual mode, but sometimes it gives some cool results.
Nice shots, Mike! I’m so jealous, haven’t seen any damselfly or dragonfly here yet..
Thanks. I’ll see if I can send some your way-we seem to have a pretty good number of them at the moment.
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