Dragonfly mid flight

[nagoshua]

I know it's far from perfect and its not as good as pictures ive taken of more stationary insects, but this is probly the picture im happiest with this summer, ive been looking for these all summer without that much luck, the ones i did find flew off. Anyways, this guy was gaurding his territory at a pond so he kept flying round the same place. Out of around 40 shots i managed to get about 7 or 8 in focus.. and this was the best composition i managed to get, which isn't amazing so any tips on improving these two aspects whilst tracking a fast subject and any other critique would be helpful. Also, does anyone know the name of the species... it was found in british woodland to narrow it down a bit.

ISO 400
200mm
f6.3
1/320 sec

 

[nagoshua]

2nd crop:

 

[LaFoto]

Hey, nice to be seeing your second crop, for that I find better composed than the first. Which I take was the original "in-camera" crop?

If I had ever managed to photograph a dragonfly in flight, like you did, I would be extremely happy about the photo, too. Only nitpick I have is that it has no more room to fly into, there is more room behind it than in front, but hey ... to be capturing one in flight at all...

And yet, people might think the action ought to have been even more frozen with no motion blurring in the wings, and others might like just this very aspect. That is a debatable aspect about this photo.

 

[Mesoam]

kudo's i personally know how hard it is to get dragon fly's in flight. great coloring on that one too

 

[nagoshua]

And yet, people might think the action ought to have been even more frozen with no motion blurring in the wings, and others might like just this very aspect. That is a debatable aspect about this photo.

This was the minimum aperture of the lens i was using at that focal length (sucky lens lol), i didnt really wanna push up the ISO any more than that so i couldn't really have got a faster shutter speed.

 

[MarkCSmith]

I think the first crop is better, the second one is just too plain ol' "subject in the middle" for me, especially since the focus makes it obvious the dragonfly is the subject. The first crop gives the picture a certain sense of movement and urgency that I really dig, like the dragonfly is leaving the frame.

 

[skieur]

A great shot but unfortunately from the point of view of composition the dragonfly is flying out of the frame. Ideally, the photographer should have been at a different angle to the dragonfly and the shot should have more space in front of the dragonfly than behind it.

skieur