Posted in Art, Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, Libellula needhami, Needham's Skimmer, Needham's Skimmer dragonfly, red dragonfly, Tamron 180mm macro lens on October 3, 2014|
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Two weeks ago, during the waning days of summer, I captured this image of a beautiful Needham’s Skimmer dragonfly (Libellula needhami) at Huntley Meadows Park, the local marshland where I do a lot of my shooting. The vivid red of its body made it really stand out—camouflage did not seem to be a viable option.
Although this dragonfly species is pretty common, I only saw a couple of them this season and this was the only one that I managed to photograph. The dragonfly was perched on a dried stalk in a field and it was tough to try to get any kind of clear background, particularly because I did not want to move too much and risk scaring away the dragonfly.
In these two images, you can see two slightly different approaches that I used. In the first one, I was not worried that there were some horizontal stalks in the background. In fact, I actually like the repetition of the horizontal line and don’t find them distracting, given how blurred they are. In the second image, I tried to get as uncluttered a background as I could, which isolates the dragonfly a little better. I tend to like the first image a little more, but I welcome any thoughts about which image you prefer.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
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Mike Powell 