What do you do when the wildlife subject that you are attempting to photograph puts itself in a man-made setting, rather than a more natural environment? That was my dilemma when a Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) landed on one of the slats of a railing surrounding part of the boardwalk at Huntley Meadows Park, the local marshland where I take a lot of my photographs.
As I looked down the railing at the dragonfly, my eye was attracted to the repeating pattern of the slats, and I decided to try a creative approach to an image using that pattern. I chose camera settings that would give me a relatively shallow depth of field. Then I carefully composed the shot so that some other slats would appear in the background in a blurry form, but the one on which the dragonfly perched would be in sharp focus.
Although I generally prefer a more natural setting for my wildlife subjects, I think I managed to achieve a pretty cool effect that was relatively close to what I had in mind. I especially like the detail that I was able to capture of the weathered metal slat in the foreground (click on the photo to see a higher resolution view).
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Mike Powell 