Gray Petaltail dragonflies (Tachopteryx thoreyi) are one of the friendliest and tamest dragonfly species that I have encountered. If you hang around with them often enough, they are almost certain to land on you, particularly if you are wearing gray clothing that somehow reminds them of a tree. It is a little hard not to flinch when one of these relatively large dragonflies (3 inches (75 mm) in length) perches on your head or shoulder.
Gray Petaltails will also let you get pretty close to them when they are perched on trees. Quite frequently, though, they are perched above eye level, so being that close does not allow you to capture close-up images. This past Saturday when I was hunting for dragonflies with my friend Walter Sanford, we spotted a Gray Petaltail perched on a fallen branch that was at knee level. After we had both taken some shots, Walter challenged me to see how close I could get to the dragonfly to capture images with my macro lens.
The first shot shows one of my attempts to get a head-on shot. It is very cool to look another creature straight in the eyes, but it is rare that one will permit you to do so, especially at such close range. It seemed clear to me that the dragonfly was quite aware of my presence, but did not consider me to be a threat.
I took the second shot from the side as I moved even closer to my subject. I was trying my best to capture some of the details of the dragonfly’s eye that was nearest to me and was not concerned that most of the rest of its head was out of focus. If you double-click on the image, you can see some of the ommatidia, the individual optical units that make up a dragonfly’s amazing multi-faceted compound eyes.
If you want to learn more about dragonfly eyes, check out a wonderful article at medium.com entitled “30,000 Facets Give Dragonflies A Different Perspective: The Big Compound Eye In The Sky“. Scientists, for example, know that the thousands of ommatidia produce a mosaic of “pictures,” but how exactly this visual mosaic is integrated in the insect brain is still not known.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Nice Mike! It is fun to photograph them that close! Great images!
That really is close. Good for you.
Thanks, Steve. My friend took a few shots of me taking my close-up shots of the dragonfly. I may ask his permission to share one of his shots in another posting. The macro lens I was using is 180mm, which allows me to have a much better standoff distance than my 100mm macro. As you know, when you are that close, it is hard to maintain focus when handholding, but I took multiple shots to get ones that are relatively sharp.
Impressive!
and expressive 🙂
Impressive how close you were able to get. Terrific images, Mike.
Thanks, Jane. Sometimes subject like this will let me get close and sometimes they will not, but I never know unless I try. 🙂
Amazing!
So close!
The shots were taken from a relatively close range, Chris. How close? I got permission from my friend to run one of his photos that shows me in action, which will give you a real sense of how close I was to the dragonfly.
Aye aye, Sir, the eyes again! Wonderful detail, especially in your second shot. I too have often wondered how their brains receive and process the mosaic of impulses that they must receive from these many facets. Another mystery that interests me is how spiders’ brains deal with what they see with their eight (or, in some varieties, six) eyes. Or, come to think of it, what about harvestmen, with those two infinitesimal eyes perched above the gondola of a body and having to direct precise negotiation of those amazingly long and spindly legs? Wonders will surely never cease!
[…] to the Gray Petaltail dragonfly when I captured some macro images of its eyes that I featured in a posting earlier this week. My friend Walter Sanford, with whom I frequently go on photographic forays for […]
Nice. I love the patterns in dragonfly eyes.
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