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Archive for November, 2015

Farewell to a familiar friend?

Posted in Dragonflies, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , , on November 2, 2015| 4 Comments »

A bittersweet feeling at times envelops me at this time of the year as I photograph some summer species, never knowing for sure if it will be the last time I see them until next year.

This past Friday I spotted a tiny female Familiar Bluet damselfly (Enallagma civile), a species that I haven’t seen in months. I had almost forgotten how small these damselflies are, about 1.1 to 1.5 inches (29-39mm) in total length. Despite their diminutive size, they have wonderful colors and markings and I was thrilled to be able to be able to capture some of that beauty with my macro lens.

Will I see another Familiar Bluet? I will keep looking in familiar places, hoping for yet another rendezvous, for one more chance for a final farewell.

Familiar Bluet

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Six-spotted Tiger Beetle in Autumn

Posted in Autumn, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , on November 2, 2015| 8 Comments »

I’m happy to see that some insects are still with us despite the cooling autumn weather. On Friday, I spotted this gorgeous metallic green Six-spotted Tiger Beetle (Cicindela sexguttata) on a fallen log at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Virginia.

Six-spotted Tiger Beetle

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Dragonfly on leg

Posted in Autumn, Dragonflies, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , , on November 1, 2015| 8 Comments »

What do you do when a dragonfly lands on you? My first reaction, of course, was to take a photo when this Autumn Meadowhawk (Sympetrum vicinum) landed on my leg on Friday.

The good news was that I had a macro lens on my camera, so I knew that I would be able to focus on the dragonfly. The bad news was that it was a 180mm  macro lens, so I had to go through acrobatic contortions to try to achieve enough distance to fit the entire dragonfly into the frame. I also had to move like a ninja to keep from scaring away my subject.

In the end, I managed to get a decent shot of the dragonfly by standing as tall as I could and shooting straight downward, although my gray sweatshirt billowed out a bit and obscured the view of the dragonfly’s feet. For those of you who are not familiar with Autumn Meadowhawks, they are small dragonflies with bodies about an inch or so in length (25mm).

Autumn Meadowhawk

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

 

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Taking off into November

Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , on November 1, 2015| 9 Comments »

The egrets and green herons have gone south for the winter, but the Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) at Huntley Meadows Park continue to provide me with lots of photo opportunities.

Great Blue Herons present an unusual challenge to me—they are so long and wide when in flight that I actual have to remember to zoom out when photographing them in order to fit them in the frame.  Like most wildlife photographers, I usually am complaining about needing more reach and spend most of my time shooting with the lens almost fully extended.

In this first shot, I was able to anticipate the action and captured the heron’s takeoff almost exactly the way you see it. In the second shot, however, I slightly misjudged the speed of the heron and almost cut off the wings and the feet. As you can see, the light was beautiful and I was happy to be able to capture a lot of beautiful wing details.

Before long migrating ducks should be arriving and you should be relieved from steady diet of heron photos with which I have been populating my postings recently.

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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