As I edited these photos of a Blue Dasher dragonfly, I couldn’t help but think of the Olympic ski jumping sport. Take a look at how these dragonflies retract their legs as they fly.
In June 2021, I attended an eye-opening and instructional workshop with José Madrigal, a well-known macro photographer. It was my very first photography workshop. What I have learned is immense, thanks to his patience and instructional style. I also met a handful of colleagues, which made a world of difference with the camaraderie we all shared that day.
The workshop was six hours long and divided into two sections. These are some shots I made during the second half of the workshop. The first half was dedicated to photographing bees in flight, too. We all met at José’s private ranch and explored the area freely. He keeps a lot of the area natural with plenty of wildflowers. We used the pond on his property for the dragonflies you see here. Most of the light background you see is the pond water. Some brown spots in the photos’ upper section come from the reeds and other aquatic plants that were not in focus. I was lucky to have made 12 photos in 8 minutes and salvaged the ones I feature in this post.
Blue Dashers are masterful mosquito eaters. They tend to catch 95% of the mosquitoes they hunt–something I cannot say about us photographers trying to catch them in flight! As their name implies, they are fast fliers and super agile. We were using a shutter speed of at least 1/1500 seconds to photograph them in flight. These may appear similar because they were captured using the burst mode in my Sony camera. Both male and female Blue Dashers start brightly colored, as these photos show. When they age, though, they become more gray.
The takeaway from this workshop cannot be described in words. Besides learning camera settings to photograph these dragonflies in flight, there were other takeaways from being around a group of photographers. One thing was very clear for everyone who attended the workshop. Photographing these flying beauties is a lot harder than we had anticipated. A few of the folks could never get a dragonfly in focus. We left with a wealth of information and a strong desire to spend more time trying to photograph dragonflies in different settings.
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Rebecca Cuningham
Wow, 1/1500 seconds shutter speed! Great captures.
Egidio Leitao
Thanks so much, Rebecca.
Pequeño mundo (pk🌎)
💓💖💚💛
Blessed and Happy afternoon 🌞
Greetings PK 🌎🇪🇸
Egidio Leitao
Thank you, PK.
Marie A Bailey
Beautiful photos, and that dragonfly is gorgeous.
Egidio Leitao
Thank you, Marie.
SoyBend
Wow, I’ve never seen a dragonfly as colorful as that before! It’s beautiful.
Egidio Leitao
Blue dashers are really gorgeous. Thanks for commenting.
Amy
Amazing photos of the dragonfly! It’s really difficult to capture them in photo.
Egidio Leitao
Thank you, Amy. I confess that I prefer to photograph them when they stop on a stick.
Toonsarah
Beautifully captured in flight, just amazing! That sounds like an excellent workshop and these images prove it 🙂
Egidio Leitao
Thanks, Sarah. I liked the workshop so much that I went back to a refresher a few months later.
Tra Italia e Finlandia
Fantastici scatti! 👏
Egidio Leitao
Grazie mille.
margaret21
These are fabulous shots! You learnt your lessons well that day. Looking forward to seeing more. PS. This comment is actually written in the comments section of your blog!
Egidio Leitao
That’s wonderful news, Margaret. Thanks for letting me know. Also, thanks for the compliment.
Khürt Williams
These are beautiful Egídio.
Egidio Leitao
Thank you, Khürt.
Writing to Freedom
What beautiful images and dragonflies. I love the colors and hope to see them in person.
Egidio Leitao
Thank you, Brad.