When photographing a subject, how important are the surroundings to you? Most of you know that I like close-up shots and often I zoom in or crop to the point where you don’t have a good sense of the environment.
This past weekend, I went for a walk along the Potomac River (on the Virginia side) and observed a lot of damselflies. I had my Tamron 150-600mm lens on my camera and soon realized that I had a problem—even at the minimum focusing distance (approximately 9 feet/2.7 meters), there was no way that I could fill the frame with a damselfly.
Still, I was drawn to the beauty of the damselflies, which I believe are Blue-tipped Dancers (Argia tibialis), and I took quite a few shots of them.
As I reviewed the images on my computer, I realized how much I liked the organic feel of the natural surroundings. In the first shot, there are lots of vines on the surface of the rock on which the damselfly is perched that add texture and visual interest. In the second shot, I love the twist in the vine and the single leaf hanging down.
All in all, the surroundings on these two shots were so interesting that I didn’t feel any desire to crop the images more severely, and the environment has become just as much the subject as the damselfly. It’s probably worth remembering this the next time when I am tempted to move in really close to a subject—I should at least attempt to get some environmental shots too.
UPDATE: It looks like my initial identification was off—there are lots of blue damselflies and this one more probably is a Big Bluet (Enallagma durum). Thanks to my local odonata expert, Walter Sanford, for the assist.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Blue-tipped Dancer? Hmmm, did you consider Big Bluet?
Let me look a little closer and reconsider the call.
Hi Mike – thank you for taking time to visit my blog today. I enjoy following photography blogs – especially those that feature close up views (a favorite pastime of people like me who ‘live deep;).
One suggestion – you might go to your Gravatar page (your photo shows up when you ‘liked’ my blog. Because I click on your photo to find your blog, but you haven’t included your blog URL on your gravatar page. It will help people find your blog.
I really enjoyed your posting and appreciate your recommendation about Gravatar. From your descriptions, I think I am too more of a “live deep” kind of person.
I love this one’s color. I have to pay close attention to backgrounds when shooting the very small things but it doesn’t seem so critical with larger flowers. Small things get easily swallowed up by the busyness of nature.
You have great backgrounds in many of your photos and they’ve helped make me more aware of what might show up in my own.
Thanks for taking the time, Allen, for such a thoughtful comment. I shoot most of the time in aperture preferred mode, so depth of field is a constant part of my calculations as I frame my shots. You are so right about the “busyness” of nature swallowing up our subjects. Sometimes, it’s simply the color that makes the subject stand out, and I think was the case with the damselfly on the rocks–the damselfly is the only brightly-colored object in the photo.
I really like both of these, but I’m partial to the one with the dangling leaf. The vivid, electric blue makes this beauty stand out wonderfully against any background – no need to get closer.
Thanks. All to often I feel like I need to get closer and closer, when the reality is that there are lots of other factors that go into a good photos.
So true!