Figure 1 – “Dragonfly on a rectilinear grid,” (c) DE Wolf 2013

Here is a picture that I did last weekend just for fun.  We have had quite the crop of dragonflies this summer.  I love the intricacy of their wings and the wonderful shiny colors they present. In a recent post I put up an image of one from my friend Eleanor’s garden.  Still, I’ve been too lazy to set up my tripod and stalk them among the wildflowers.  A good picture is going to take a lot of patience and invested time.

So, I was quite delighted to find a large dragonfly hanging on a screen in one of my family room windows on Saturday.  He was, I think, just hanging out and waiting for the sun to wake him from poikilothermic dormancy.  I loved the delicate veins in his wing contrasting against the perfectly rectilinear grid of the screen  How to capture this?

I decided upon my EF70-200mm f/4L USM.  I shot at ISO 3200, since I didn’t want any shake.  I was about 2 feet away, just resting my elbow on the top of a television set for support.  I used a zoom of 113mm, and took the shot AV priority at f5.6 at 1/160 seconds.  To get what I wanted I had to use manual focus.  It took quite a bit of work in Photoshop to get the contrast that I wanted.  I’m certain  that it could have been done better.  But I am reasonably happy with the results.