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Posts Tagged ‘dragonfly eyes’

Focusing on the eyes

Posted in Autumn, Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 14, 2014| 9 Comments »

“Make sure the eyes are in focus.” I can’t even count the number of times that I have read or heard these words of advice, which I usually try to follow, even when taking extreme close-up macro shots.

These are the compound eyes of the Autumn Medowhawk dragonfly (Sympetrum vicinum), a close relative of the Blue-faced Meadowhawk that I have featured in several postings recently. I took this shot on a cool day when the dragonfly was perched on a tree, trying to warm itself in the warmth of the sun. The camera’s aperture setting was in a middle range at f/9.0, but with the subject this close, the depth of field was pretty shallow and the eyes are pretty much the only portions of the dragonfly in focus (in addition to small section of the wings and the front legs).

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Blue-eyed Blue-faced Beauty

Posted in Art, Autumn, Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 18, 2014| 22 Comments »

When I am trying to take a close-up shot of a dragonfly, I know that I have succeeded when I manage to capture some of the details of the ommatidia. What are ommatidia? Ommatidia are the up to 30,000 hexagonal facets that make up the incredible compound eyes of a dragonfly. For more information and a more scientific explanation, check out a posting entitled “Super-predators” that Sue did in June 2013 in her Backyard Biology blog.

Rather than think about science, today I would prefer to simply bask in the beauty of the blue-eyed Blue-faced Meadowhawk dragonfly (Sympetrum ambiguum) that I photographed yesterday as it perched on a fallen leaf at my favorite marshland park. The color of the dragonfly’s eyes completely captivate me.

As for the ommatidia, I’ve cropped a portion of the image and added it to the posting as a second image to make it even clearer what they look like. I chuckled a little when I examined the cropped image, because this dragonfly, like some others that I have photographed, has the sparsely distributed mustache and chin hairs that never fail to remind me of human teenagers who refuse to shave in a vain attempt to look older.

Blue-faced MeadowhawkBlue-faced Meadowhawk

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Dragonfly eyes

Posted in Art, Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , on October 5, 2014| 15 Comments »

One of the main reasons why I love having a macro lens is that it that it lets me capture photos like this extreme close-up image of a male Eastern Pondhawk dragonfly (Erythemis simplicicollis) that I took yesterday at Green Spring Gardens, a historical, county-run garden in Alexandria, Virginia.

I have always been fascinated by the multi-faceted compound eyes of dragonflies and the blue-green eyes of the Eastern Pondhawk are particularly stunning. When I first caught sight of this dragonfly, he was sunning himself on a rock near the edge of a small pond. I kept low to the ground and approached him slowly. He didn’t fly away and seemed more curious about my presence than afraid.

For these shots, I rested the lens hood of the camera on the edge of the rock ledge to get this low, eye-to-eye perspective. This technique served to steady my camera, so I was able to capture a good deal of detail of the dragonfly’s face. In the initial photo, for example,which is a cropped version of the second image, you can see that the dragonfly has stubble on his chin. The third shot is a cropped version of the last photo, again to show greater detail and to draw the attention of viewers more directly to the eyes.

Do you think the shots are more effective when cropped or do you prefer the larger perspective images?

Eastern Pondhawk

Eastern Pondhawk

Eastern Pondhawk

 

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

 

 

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Dragonfly eyes

Posted in Art, Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, spring, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2014| 11 Comments »

Yesterday, I seemed to be particularly fascinated by insect eyes and did a posting on a fly, whose compound eyes were pretty amazing. However, dragonflies have the largest compound eyes of any insect and I was thrilled to be able to capture this face-to-face shot of a Common Whitetail dragonfly (Plathemis lydia), peering right at me over the edge of a leaf.

A dragonfly’s eyes can have as many as 30,000 facets, known as ommatidia, that contain light-sensitive proteins, according to an article in ScienceBlogs. Although, humans also have these kind of proteins, called opsins, we have only three (red, green, and blue), whereas a dragonfly has four or five, giving it the capability to see colors beyond human visual capabilities. A dragonfly’s eyes also wrap around its head, giving it an incredible field of view. For more information and a more scientific explanation, check out a posting entitled “Super-predators” that Sue did last June in her Backyard Biology blog.

I took this shot in a wooded grassy area adjacent to a pond. It seems that the Common Whitetail dragonflies are hanging out there early in the season and not too many of them are patrolling over the water, as I commonly saw them do last summer. The fact that the dragonfly was not perched on a branch coming out of the water proved to and advantage as I was able to approach pretty closely to it in order to take this shot.

dragonfly_eyes_blog

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

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