Migrant Hawker

Back to dragonflies again, this time a female Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta), which I found sunning itself on a bush.  I did see the male version of the Large Red Damselfly from a previous post, but he really was not going to play ball with the camera.

Don't worry, she's not really stuck in the spiders web:

To get these I had to lean quite a way into the bush, hanging on to it with one hand to avoid becoming one with nature, which left only one hand to hold the camera - normally I would have used a tripod, but it wasn't an option.  Camera shake (and there was lots of it given my oddly contorted, one legged stance) was eliminated with a hotshoe mounted SB800 speedlight and a fair bit of luck!

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Beautiful Demoiselle

From metal giraffes lets go to dragonflies, or rather a damselfly in this case. I don't photograph insects as a rule, it is a specialised area of photography that I'm not really geared up for, but I was out in Ashdown Forest last year and came across a number of these and was determined to get something. As luck would have it I had a Sigma 105mm macro lense in my rucksack, which I normally use for wedding ring and jewellery closeups, but was also ideal for this.

I watched them for a while and they seemed to favour a couple of particular ferns to stop for a rest on every so often, so I mounted the camera on my tripod, focussed on a likely looking leaf and waited. Unfortunately this meant standing knee deep in a rather cold stream for the best part of an hour (with unseen things nibbling at my legs I discovered later). After a short while they ignored me completely and I finally got this shot. Strictly speaking the light is too contrasty to call it a great shot, but I'm quite pleased with it.

From looking at the British Dragonfly website I am pretty sure this is a male Beautiful Demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo), although if anyone knows better please feel free to correct me.

If you would like to know more about dragonflies and damselflies have a look at their website http://www.dragonflysoc.org.uk/ it's very informative, with a lot of useful information. They should be out again in the near future, so I'm looking forward to having another go at photographing them this year.

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