Dragonfly in bright sun

[Streets]

Taken with 18-135 SAM

 

[tirediron]

Nicely captured. It might be worth backing off the highlights a bit.

 

[Streets]

I did try to do what you said, but the prismatic effect was lost in the attempt. My post-processing software is very basic. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Emanuel M]

You have to soften the light - it's too harsh.
I know a Macro photographer that uses a White umbrela to diffuse the light.
I usually try to shade the bugs with my own body.

Can you see the difference?

Cheers

 

[Streets]

You have to soften the light - it's too harsh.
I know a Macro photographer that uses a White umbrela to diffuse the light.
I usually try to shade the bugs with my own body.

Can you see the difference?

Cheers

Yes, I see the difference. Different Dragonfly species, different light, different angle. Notice that the prismatic effect of the wing structure is missing. I really like my photo. Sorry that you don't.

 

[Emanuel M]

You liking your photo is all that matter
I was just giving you a very simple tip.
If you want to try next time...

Cheers

 

[Overread17 5]

The differences run deeper than that. The OP's photo is of a dragonfly; whilst the latter shown photo by Emanuel is of a damselfly. You can tell easily from the wings; a Dragonfly cannot curve its wings into its body when at rest; instead they remain outstretched in the flight position; meanwhile a damselfly can move its wings in to rest near to its body. There are also differences in structure and head shape; but the wings is the most typical and clearest to see.


In the OP#s photo it is clearly suffering from the harsh and strong sunlight. This harms the photo and whilst the directional light has shown up the prismatic effect of the wings; its also blasted the highlights out into nothing but pure white and given very harsh very dark shadows. This really takes away a lot of the beauty of the scene if seen with the naked eye and its a limit of the dynamic range of cameras.

I would urge to take advance of things like the use of a diffuser to block out some sunlight; although honestly during the warmer brighter parts of the day using a block on the sun for a subject like a dragon who can be very responcive to such shadowing at that period; is hard.

Thus another option (besides waiting for evening or heading out very early) is to use a flash. Even on mounted on the camera can be used and diffused to provide fillflash; letting you expose for the highlights and have the flash boost the local lighting to fill in the shadows of the subject. I harsher lighting conditions this is an often used method (esp with portraits of people but its used in anything really). Fill flash (with something like a lumiquest softbox on the speedlite flash) would be my suggestion for working in harsh strong sunlight.

 

[davholla14 1]

I would urge to take advance of things like the use of a diffuser to block out some sunlight; although honestly during the warmer brighter parts of the day using a block on the sun for a subject like a dragon who can be very responcive to such shadowing at that period; is hard.

.

I am not surprised that it is hard to use a diffuser with a dragonfly. I don't like the sun much so I always take photos in shade so it is not a big problem for me. Here is one I took from Colombia
IMG_8432dragonfly by davholla2002, on Flickr