Female Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly - C&C welcome

[arcooke]

Saw this little critter outside today. She was nice enough to let me photograph her. The picture could be clearer, but I zoomed in full (18x) from about 4 feet away to get this.

This is one of my better macro shots. If you'd like to critique it, feel free. :greenpbl:

 

[Zabimaru]

The image doesn't work for me, it isn't showing up.

 

[arcooke]

That's odd. Are you at work? I had the image uploaded on petaimg.com, maybe your work blocks that website.

Anyhow, I linked it from flickr instead. Hopefully that helps.

 

[settons]

beautiful colour.

i would think about getting a tighter crop

 

[chrisburke]

wow the color is amazing.. i agree with ^^^ though, tighter crop.. did you enhance those colors, or is that how it looks?

 

[arcooke]

I adjust the levels just a tiny bit because the wood looked a bit washed out. Here is a before and after:

I couldn't crop it any tighter without having too much grain.

 

[chrisburke]

thats one impressive bug

 

[arcooke]

Yeah.. it really caught my attention. To be honest, at first I thought it was a weed sprouting up in my landscaping.. so I went down to go pull it and it moved lol.

Made me jump at first.. but when I realized what it was, I grabbed my camera. I've never seen one of these before.

After researching it, I found out the females are bright green and the males are bright blue. Gotta love nature.

 

[Overread17 5]

Very impressive shot!
Dargons are a real pain to shoot at as they are so flighty so getting them is never easy

 

[ArtPhotography]

This is a really cool shot. I would like a tighter crop that still included the wings, though. Great color!

 

[Sydkid]

Great depth of field! I like the little bit of blur in the foreground. I agree with the cropping suggestions, though I understand you don't want to add more noise. Great color and detail. We only have boring brown dragon flies here, or so it seems.

 

[Ptyler22]

Dam that is one nice dragon fly, I have some neon green ones around here but not like that one, nice shot too.