You know that summer is coming to a close when the dragonflies that were in constant flight earlier in the season seem to be resting more often, like this Black Saddlebags dragonfly (Tramea lacerata) that one of my fellow photographers, Walter Sanford, pointed out this past weekend at my local marsh. This dragonfly kept flying back and forth between two perches that were tantalizingly just out of the range of the 180mm lens that I had on my camera. I didn’t dare to take the time to change my lens, knowing that the dragonfly would almost certainly fly away at the most inopportune moment, so I ended up cropping a lot, especially in the first image.
The only shots that I could get of Saddlebags dragonflies earlier in the summer were in-flight shots and I have already posted some shots of a Black Saddlebags in the air. I realized, though, that I had not posted an image of its more colorful counterpart, the Carolina Saddlebags (Tramea carolina) that I photographed during a visit to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond, Virginia. I took that shot (the third one below) from a pretty long distance, but was able to achieve focus and capture some of the wonderful details of this beautiful red dragonfly.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
That a pretty one and the one in flight it fantastic..:-)
Thanks, Ed. Shooting in flight, especially when they are not hovering, is a real hit-and-miss proposition, with a low success rate, but I always like to try.
It looks like Mr. Carolina has had a rather rough time of it. It’s really pretty amazing how well they can still fly when they lose pieces of their wings. Very nice mid-flight catch!
Nice shot despite the difficulties, I would take the shot too.
Nice shots! There’s just enough blur in the background to make the one in flight look like he was really moving, like a dive bomber.
Lazy dragonflies must make your job easier. The red on looks like a little sky diver to me.