Flying dragonfly

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Flying dragonfly

April 13, 2014 by Mike Powell

Spring is here and I am once again chasing dragonflies, on a quest to capture images of these beautiful insects. Common Green Darners (Anax junius) rarely seem to perch, so I was forced to try to photograph them in flight.

This early in the spring, there aren’t yet a lot of dragonflies, so my patience was tested as I waited for one to fly by. I tried a lot of different approaches and the one that worked best on this day was to focus manually, which is a bit of a challenge at 300mm when the subject is moving pretty fast.

I hope I’ll get some better shots later this season—this is my best one so far.

Posted in Art, Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, spring, Winter | Tagged Alexandria VA, Anax junius, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, Common Green Darner, dragonfly, dragonfly in flight, green darner, Huntley Meadows Park | 9 Comments

9 Responses

on April 13, 2014 at 6:51 am | Reply caleephotography

Catching a flying dragonfly with your camera is one of the biggest challenges! Well done, Mike! 🙂
- on April 13, 2014 at 6:58 am | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks. There is a lot of luck in getting any kind of decent shot. As you can imagine, most of the shots are totally blurry and out of focus or feature missing or cut-off dragonflies. This shot is not quite sharp, but does show off the beautiful colors of the dragonfly.
on April 13, 2014 at 8:47 am | Reply Jet Eliot

I know how fast these beauties buzz by, and this is impressive, Mike.
on April 13, 2014 at 9:39 am | Reply New Hampshire Garden Solutions

I’ve read a lot of blogs but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a flying dragonfly on any of them. Well done!
on April 13, 2014 at 10:42 am | Reply kcg1974

So magical…
- on April 13, 2014 at 2:48 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks. I love dragonflies and I am happy that they have started to show up again at my local marsh.
  - on April 13, 2014 at 4:25 pm kcg1974
    
    One of my favorites, Mike. Thank you.
on April 13, 2014 at 10:54 am | Reply Sue

Well done, this is a nearly impossible task, and to do it on manual focus…!
- on April 13, 2014 at 7:46 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  It’s tough, but not impossible. The target is so small and moving fast enough that my auto-focus doesn’t have time to lock on to a dragonfly. When a dragonfly gets close enough, I try to track and manually focus, but my success rate is still not very high. There are some moments when a dragonfly hesitates or hovers and that’s about the only time when I realistically have a chance.