— As I worked on 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 dragonfly retract their legs as they fly.
This past weekend 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 personally met a handful of colleagues, and that made a world of difference with the camaraderie we all shared.
The workshop was six hours long, and it was divided into two sections. We all met at José’s private ranch and explored the area. He keeps a lot of the area natural with plenty of wildflowers. For the dragonflies you see here, we used the pond in his property. Most of the light background you see is the pond water. Some of the brown tint comes from the reeds and other aquatic plants that were not in focus. These are some shots I made during the second half of the workshop. The first half was dedicated to photographing bees in flight. I was lucky to have made 12 photos in 8 minutes and salvaged the ones I feature in this post.
The take-away from this experience cannot be described in words. Besides learning camera settings to photograph these dragonflies in flight, there were also other take-aways one gets 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. We left with a wealth of information and a strong desire to spend more time trying to photograph dragonflies in different settings.
If you want to look at a large size of these photos, remember to simply click on each photo.
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