Yesterday I was happy to get some shots of my favorite dragonfly, the Halloween Pennant dragonfly (Celithemis eponina), at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, Virginia.
I don’t see this dragonfly at all at most of the usual places where I take photographs, so I was really excited when I caught sight of a couple of them yesterday. I chased them around for well over an hour and attempted to take a couple of hundred shots using a wide range of camera settings.
Why did I take so many photos? The dragonfly gets the “pennant” part of its name because it likes to perch on the very tip of a weed stalk and waves in the breeze like a pennant. Yesterday, in fact, was breezy and it was quite an adventure trying to keep the dragonfly in focus, particularly because I was trying to fill the frame with the dragonfly.
The dragonflies that I photographed were reasonably cooperative and I was able to attempt shots from the side, from above, and even from below (fortunately the insects in the grass did not bite very often).
I have not been able to go through the shot to pick the best ones, but thought it would be nice to post one now, especially for those readers who may not be familiar with this beautiful dragonfly. I suspect that I will eventually post at least a couple more images in future postings.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
I know what you mean about the difficulty of photographing them in the wind. They occur out on the prairie here, and find the windiest places and the tallest, least sturdy stalk for perching, so there is maximum waving of wings. I would have thought this was just male advertisement, but the females do it too.
Beautiful
WOW! Great shot, dragons and damsels and hard to get detail on and you knocked it out of the park, patience paid off with this one..:-)
great shot, not easy to get in a breeze I find my vocab changes quite a bit trying to get a frame of some tiny insect which is flapping about 🙂
It’s a beautiful thing. Thanks for going through what you did to show it to us!