[Soupdragon]

They go like rockets and in unpredictable directions.
I have not given up on this yet but I am going to have to wait til next summer now.

[Rob Barron]

Mighty difficult shot to get so don't feel too bad soup. To get one of these in flight, you need to observe one for a while as you will notice they keep coming back to the same places. Watch the places he comes and hovers and then set yourself focused and ready and wait for him to come back to that spot.

They do the same for settling down on a log, branch, etc. so if you use the same technique you can catch them there too. Early morning they are easier to get settled as they don't tend to move much at all.

All in all, that is not a bad effort so keep trying and when practicing, go for a smaller aperture to give yourself a bit of leeway on the focusing. The best shots are of course the ones with a wide aperture, pin sharp focusing and BG all blurred out but that takes a lot of practice and an equal amount of luck! :o)

Cheers,
Rob

[Soupdragon]

Well at least I got the blurred bit.

[danpen]

I spent a couple of hours one afternoon trying to get a dragonfly in flight and didn't do any better than that. It's frustrating but if we keep trying we'll get there eventually.

Rob, that's good advice, cheers

[Soupdragon]

Yep! roll on next summer.

[Steve]

As you say they are extreamly difficult to photograph once they have woken up and your effort here is very good for the learning expieriance, you already knew what was wrong and how to correct it next time so (although you have a long wait until next summer) your next shots should be much improved

As Rob has said the best time to get these is the early morning, just after the sun has risen. There are two reasons for this, the first is that the light is soft and warm and will offer lovelly colour tones for both the dragonflies and any backgrounds that you catch without adding in harsh highlights and dark shadows, and the second reason is simply that they are a lot more dosile in the morning. Usually they will be almost stationary as they spread their wings in the first sunlight to dry off the nights moisture, when they do fly it is at a much more lesurly pace making on the wing shots easier too.

Here are a couple that I took early in the morning on a recent trip to the south of France, unfortunately they are all static and not on the wing though

Dragonflys