Back in 2014 I started documenting Dragonflies and Damselflies that were native to my area. To find most of these, knowing what habitat they frequented and flight times were key. They like mosquitos and, for the most part, marshy swampy areas or lakes and small ponds. Needless to say, I suffered many insect bites and the family jewels were often wet from wading waist deep in water. Many of these species only fly three weeks of their life, so knowing when they hatched was crucial to finding them. What made this project troublesome are the many stages Odonates go through while becoming adults, and this applies to both sexes. Some, sexes look alike, but the vast majority look completely different. It drove me crazy trying to ID. them! Anyway, this is only a small example of the hundreds of shots that I collected. I tried to pick the rarest and hardest to capture.
These were taken with a bunch of different cameras and lenses, too many to list with the shots, so if interested, I suggest a browser plug-in to get the EXIF data.
For this shot, I sacrificed face detail to get the spikes on the legs. I could have "burned" the face a bit in post, but since it wasn't what I was going for, I left it as shot.
I shot this using the EF-S 35mm f/2.8 macro IS STM on an EOS 7D mark II utilizing the built in ring light set to "bright". That is a piece of pine straw he's resting on, so you get an idea of how small he is.
