Dragonfly photography tips
Background
It is hard to take pictures of dragonflies. To take good pictures is even
harder and to get really good pictures is nearly impossibly. In the past
four years I have taken thousands of dragonfly pictures, and of all these
I'm really satisfied with less than ten! This makes dragonfly photographing
a real challenge, you will always be working on the perfect dragonfly picture.
How to:
There are two methods of dragonfly photographing:
The catching method and the sneaking method.
The easiest way to get a good pictures is to catch the dragonfly, stun it,
find a nice place to put it and take the picture. Please notify that dragonfly
catching without special license is prohibited in some countries (i.e. Germany).
There are two different ways to stun the dragonfly:
Carefully turn the head of the dragonfly one round around and the back again.
This method is the best one for damselflies, but is sometimes useful even
for bigger dragonflies. Be sure that the head doesn't incline at any side.
A warped head can destroy the best picture.
Carefully fold the wings of the dragonfly together and press them gently,
but with quite a high pressure between your thumb and forefinger for a minute
or two. This method works well with bigger dragonflies such as; Aeshna
and Libellula.
A stunned dragonfly will sit calmly for some minute(s), but be ready because
sometimes it will fly away after only a few seconds.
If you practice the above methods with care the dragonflies won't get injured,
but never fold the wings together on newly-hatched specimen, the wings will
stick together and the dragonfly never will be able to fly. No picture is
worth a injured insect!
A harder way to get your dragonfly pictures is to look for flying dragonflies,
look for their landing places, sneak towards the insect and probably you
will come close enough to get your picture before the dragonfly flies away.
This is very difficult, the dragonfly can see in all directions, even backwards,
at the same time. Some people says that the dragonflies don't react as much
to the color green . I believe in this, green clothes make me able to come
nearer to the insect, sometimes close enough, sometimes not.
Copulating dragonflies are easier to sneak near than single ones, in fact
the only way to get pictures of mating dragonflies is to sneak. If you catch
the copulating pair, they will separate immediately.
Equipment:
You don't need any expensive photographic equipment for dragonfly photographing;
a common 35mm SLR- camera will be perfect, a telescopic lens, for example
a 135mm will be good, maybe you've got a zoom-telescopic lens (a 70-210mm,
a 100-300mm or something like that) with macro is what you can use.
If your lens doesn't work at close distances you can buy a close-up lens,
to mount in the front of your tele-lens. This is a inexpensive accessory
(In Sweden the price is about 25 dollars, but often you can buy a set of
three for about 50 dollars), the most useful strength is +2. Be aware that
some auto-focusing cameras have problems of focusing when you use a close
up lens.
Nikon have one lens that is perfect for dragonfly photography. 200mm/f4, but the price tag is not that perfect; is Sweden one have top pay about 3000 US dollars and i think that is oput opf most ononuts budget.
The close-up lens doesn't steal as much light as the extension-tube does.
You will loose one or two aperture-steps with an extension tube, but this
wonderful little thing, that you mount between your camera and lens and
will not be harmful to the sharpness of the picture. Extension-tubes are
often sold in sets of three different strengths, they are quite expensive
(about 150 dollars in Sweden). Extension-tubes will bring you closer to
your motif than close-up lenses, but a bellow unit will bring you even closer.
A bellow unit is expensive (at least 500 dollars in Sweden), and needs much
light, is heavy to bring with you on your dragonfly photo expeditions. You
have to use a tripod to get sharp pictures with a bellow-unit and therefore
it takes some time to adjust your equipment, when you are ready to take
your picture, the dragonfly might already have flown away.
I usually use extension-tubes to take my dragonfly pictures, due to some
experience I usually don't need a tripod. A tripod is really great to get
sharp pictures, but it is quite hard to adjust the tripod fast enough to
get the picture before the dragonfly flies away.
Flash photography
The light is a problem for dragonfly photographers, there's never sufficient natural light!
To get rid of this problem one can use a faster film, but faster film means coarser grain, see below.
An other way solving the light problem is to use artificial light, e.g. electronic flash. It's hard to get
artificial light looking natural. I'm not satisfied with the trials of flash photography for dragonflies I've done,
but I've friends who use flash with very good result.
I've seen a few arrangement of electronic flashes for dragonfly photography, I think most of them are home built:
A pair of standard flashes arranged one at each side of the camera, about 10 cm (4 inch) from the camera, the flashes are
individually adjustable. One of the flash heads is covered with a whit cloth to diffuse the light. Thus the main light comes
from one direction and the diffused flash put light in the shadows from the main flash.
A powerful flash mounted on a pole, about 1,5 meter (5 feet) high. The high flash position makes the flashlight simulate
the natural sunlight.
I also have seen dragonfly photographers use standard macro-flashes, those macro flashes are mounted at the front of the
lens, usually those flashes consists of two to four small flashes, arranged in a ring, to give light from all directions.
Olympus is one manufacturer with such flashes in their catalogs, also Cokin have had such flashes, but I'm not sure if they still have.
Those macro flashes are quite expensive. A close relative to those macro flashes are the ring flashes, the function is similar,
but ring flashes have one important disadvantage: they create circular reflections in your pictures. I think those ring reflections are very ugly.
To be able to have control of the exposures in flash photography, you must use a camera with TTL-flash. All never cameras uses
TTL, check in your owners manual of your camera if you are uncertain about your camera.
Use your imagination and do some experiments to improve flash photo technique for dragonfly photography, my ideas above is just
ideas, develop and improve the ideas and let me know about the results. All good ideas will be added to this page.
Film choice:
Fortunately dragonflies prefer to be visible in sunny days, but the light
can still be a problem, especially when you use extension-tubes or a
bellow-unit.
Nowadays whn most people use digital cameras it is easier than in the old days. With a digital camera the higher ISO setting gives the higher nose leves, therefor use as low IOS as possible, but when in bad light coonditions do not fear to try higher ISO settings. WWhen in doubt try higher ISO settings in your first shots and then reduce the ISO until the dragonfly flies away. ISO 400 usually gives acceptable photos, byu the really good ones are taken at around ISO 100. When in tought light wiht rare dagonglies try ISO 800 or higher, it might work. Noise could be reduced in your photo processing software.
The close distance to the dragonfly will cause a limited depth of field,
it is often difficult to get whole the dragonfly sharp in the picture. Faster
film will create a greater depth of field, but the picture will loose sharpness
and details due to the bigger grains, therefore use as slow a film as you
can. The slow film will give you a greater number of failures due to bad
focusing, but the good pictures will be more saturated in color and show
you more details. The bigger your final pictures is, the greater those
phenomenon
will be. I use slide film for nearly all my photographing and for my dragonfly
photographing I prefer to use Kodak Ektachrome ISO 100 professional (EPP),
if the light is bad I use Ektachrome ISO 200 or sometimes ISO 400. I don't
like the Ektachrome ISO 400 for dragonfly photography, but sometimes the
light here in Sweden is just too bad.
In print film I prefer Fuji Super-G, by this film the grain and the color
saturation is no problem, the ISO 400 is a really good choice, and under
bad light conditions even the ISO 800 works well.
Focusing:
As discussed above, the depth of field is a problem in dragonfly, and most
other close-up photography, a great depth of field is important so the whole
motif will be sharp, but too much will get the background to interfere with
the motif and create a muddled picture. If you have to choose a so limited
depth of field, take to get a nice background that the whole dragonfly won't
be sharp, be sure to get the eyes of the insect is sharp. Unsharpened eyes
will destroy any good animal picture! To get a nice background search for
places with a long motif-to-background distance. Naturally clean backgrounds
as water surfaces, soft cliffs, sky or mud is preferable to bushes or high
grass.
Be careful in your focusing, if you use an auto-focus camera you might need
to focus manually, there is no room for mistakes in very close-up photography.
If you aren't sure where to put the point of focus, take several exposures
with a slight focus differ, to be sure that at least one >picture will
be good.
Composition:
Try to get the dragonfly to look as natural as possibly in your pictures.
To know what is natural, you will have to study the dragonflies before taking
pictures. Different species prefer different environment. Most damselflies
prefer to hide in the grass of the lake/river-side, the natural resting
place is often on a leaf of grass, but one Swedish damselfly the Erythromma
najas is nearly almost seen resting on a leaf of water-lily. Other
dragonflies
such as some Aeshna prefer to rest on stem of a tree, the Sympetrum
danae usually sits on a stone or cliff.
If you use catch and stun the dragonflies before taking your pictures the
most naturally-looking pictures are taken just a second before the dragonfly
will fly away. Some metallic-looking dragonflies as Somatochlora
and Cordulia often will be dark-looking without the amazing metallic
colors in your pictures, this problem is reduced, but not prevented if you
search for a photo-angle that gives you the greatest reflection of light
in the metallic parts.
Try to find some new compositions in your dragonfly pictures, after some
time your dragonfly pictures will be quite dull. You probably will take
all your pictures form the same angle of view, maybe you can find some new
compositions by trying taking very close-up pictures of dragonfly faces,
taking pictures form the underside of the dragonfly when it is sitting on
a tree stem etc.
You can find some of my best dragonfly and damselfly photos at Dragonfly gallery.
This page just deals with some methods for dragonfly photography, if my ideas work for you, then use them. If they don't
then find out your own method and let me know about the result. All good ideas will be added to this page.
Feel free to send me questions and comments.
