photoartflightYellow Swallowtail Butterfly
Posted on August 18, 2019
Continuing with the previous post with butterflies, here is a Yellow Swallowtail series of images taken at the same time as the previous post. We have not seen as many butterflies this year as previous years. Even though at this park they have a Butterfly House and raise them to release them in the park. Plus the butterfly house has plantings around the Butterfly house to attract other butterflies. In previous years they were very abundant throughout the Park. Even Dragonflies seem to be more scarce this year at this Park also. Time is marching on and the Butterflies you see show considerable wear and tear. The Butterfly series shown below really liked this plant and stayed for about 10 minutes. I only picked a few of the images of that series to post here.
Black Swallowtail Butterfly
Posted on August 14, 2019
We went to a local park to look for Dragonflies, but I noticed this Black Swallowtail Butterfly on some flowers by the pond on the way in. It looked colorful with the flowers and I liked the contrast of the dark colored butterfly against the flowers.
Female Great Blue Skimmer Dragonfly
Posted on July 29, 2019
I have not photographed as many Dragonflies this year as I have in other years. Maybe because I have been working on a few personal projects. I found these female Great Blue Skimmers at Plainsboro Preserve which is a Preserve and Nature Center along with an Audubon Center. It is about 1,000 acres, with a 50 acre lake and miles of nature trails. So it is a fun place to wander around and look for photo subjects, especially Dragonflies! On this day we mostly saw Great Blue Skimmers. Lately I use a 300mm f/4 Canon lens with a 1.4X Teleconverter for photographing Dragonflies. It allows me to get close images and seems to work well @ f/11 for getting detail, but still have a somewhat soft background. Sometimes I will go to f/8 for the series if the background is busier and shoot a series with more focus points. I then blend the images in Photoshop, to keep a softer background for my Dragonfly images but still get more of the dragonfly in focus.
Head-On View, 300mm w/ 1.4X Teleconverter
Female Great Blue Skimmer Dragonfly – 3/4 view from behind
Female Great Blue Skimmer Dragonfly – Side view, Single image
Dragonflies From Davidsons Mill Pond Park
Posted on July 10, 2019
Some Dragonflies from a recent walk at Davidsons Mill Pond Park. Featured image is a Blue Dasher (male). All images captured with a Canon 1D MkIV with a 300mm f/4 lens & 1.4X Teleconverter.
Another Blue dasher – Male
Eastern Pondhawk – Female
Eastern Pondhawk – Female
Eastern Pondhawk – Male
Slaty Skimmer Male
Common Whitetail Male
Widow Skimmer – Female
Eastern Amberwing – Male
Calico Pennant – Male
Widow Skimmer – Female
Widow Skimmer – Male
It Is Dragonfly Season
Posted on June 14, 2019
Some of my favorite photo subjects are Dragonflies and Damselflies. Here are a few Dragonflies to start with. The featured image is a photo of a female Calico Pennant. I was using a 300mm lens that has a close focusing capability, with a 1.4X Teleconverter for a combined focal length of 420mm.
Blue Dasher Dragonfly – Female
Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly – Female
Walk In The Woods #4 & 5
Posted on October 18, 2018
Some more from my Walk In The Woods multi-image detail stacked photos. The featured image is 3 images shot with a 300mm f/4 lens. Again because of how dark it was in the Woods I had to raise my ISO for these to 3200 for #4 & 6400 for #5 to get a fast enough shutter speed for handholding the camera with that focal length. Images aligned and blended in Photoshop, then cropped to where I liked it. Even opening the Canon Raw files in Photoshop’s Camera Raw software and reducing the noise from the high ISO, I still had more noise in my images than I wanted, so I then used NIK Define to reduce the noise even more. #5 is also 3 images shot with 300mm @ f/4 but more of a horizontal focus stack. I guess it is more of a challenge to get what I want this way, but it is fun to try.
Dried Weathered Leaf – #5
Walk In The Woods #2 & 3
Posted on October 14, 2018
Here is the second image from Our “Walk In The Woods” series the other day. There was not much sunlight along the path in the woods so it seemed like a lot of the subjects were mushrooms or other fungi. Again a multi-image shot, photographed @f/4, 300mm to have a shallow depth of field to highlight the areas I wanted to be sharp and to keep the background softer and darker to make the main section stand out. 4 images blended in Photoshop. I also did not want to brighten the images too much so as to maintain the Darkness of the area. The third image below, again fungi on a decaying tree limb. As before, a series of focus points & images @f/4, handheld. Assembled in Photoshop.
Coming Out of the Woods, 2 img vertical panorama with my small Panasonic Pocket Camera. Shows how dark the “Woods” were. In this image I actually oped up the shadows quite a bit so you could see some detail.
Widow Skimmer
Posted on September 17, 2018
Some more Dragonfly images from Davidson’s Mill Pond Park, shot in the beginning of September. Probably the last dragonfly images for me this year because of work. We found them around the small pond that is near the entrance along the roadway. I was hard pressed to find a few dragonflies to photograph there for the blog.
Cabbage White
Posted on September 9, 2018
Butterfly and dragonfly season is ending, but I am still finding a few still around for some last images to capture. The featured Cabbage White was on a bush near where a Monarch was feeding.
More Monarchs
Posted on September 7, 2018
Butterfly season and Summer are coming to an end. The butterflies and dragonflies are starting to look the worse for wear. Wings are starting to look more tattered and pieces are missing. These were taken at Davidson’s Mill Pond Park outside the butterfly house that is now closed. This year with work and the weather not cooperating I never shot inside the butterfly house, but I enjoy getting shots where they are not in a controlled environment anyway. I like the look and challenge of a natural environment to capture my images instead of a “zoo” like environment.
With the wind blowing them and the branch all around and their constant movement I was surprised I got some sharp images. I was not stopped down much so I sacrificed depth of field for a higher shutter speed to help stop blur from the butterfly blowing around in the wind.
photoartflight 