Last summer ramble, wth dragonflies

Every walk through Fish Creek this year I've been looking for dragonflies. Last year they were everywhere, clouds of them. This year, hardly any. Catching one in flight is the gold standard for photographers, since they are so quick.

A week ago Michelle really discovered the difference between an iPhone photograph, and one by a good camera, where macro photos are concerned. She wanted to borrow my old camera and the macro lens to see what she could capture. We planned a walk through Fish Creek and were delighted when her hubby wanted to come along with his super zoom camera, and Antje joined us as well.

The parking lot at Bebo Grove is closed. An enormous storm drain is being installed down 24 st. Seriously enormous. We had to go over to 130th Ave and park there. We slowly strolled to the river, over bridge 2, past where the bridge was swept away in the flood, up (UP!) the hill, through the alpine meadow, and back over bridge 3. It was a perfectly lovely day for a walk in the park.

I had originally thought of visiting my posing tree, as I think of it, but it's actually in the water right now. My best shot at getting on the cover of Impact magazine is to drape a runner all over the tree, doing pre or post run stretches, or maybe relaxing in the sun nibbling a snack afterward.

To the photos! It's easy to tell fall is coming. Having a completely calm pool of water for a reflection shot is pretty rare in Fish Creek.

Mom, do you want a better copy of this for your jigsaw puzzle app? I always like the texture of wood.

Sorry if I'm giving some readers a gaping maw image, sort of like a land borne kraken.

My buddy hard at work exploring the world with a good camera and better lens.

Flowers and leaves are almost always pretty.

 And the promised dragonfly shots. To be honest, I couldn't see it while shooting. I'm using a 24-105 mm lens and shooting like mad, hoping the autofocus was keeping up. If you look closely you can see there's a chunk missing out of his rear right wing. This is cropped in pretty seriously.

 Here's a different one, just hanging out in the path as we got closer and closer. Again, I've cropped way in.

 Michelle was just beside me, gradually moving in closer and closer. This one is cropped in a bit. The bug you can see coming in at the bottom of the screen frighted the dragonfly off just after this shot. She is using my 100 mm macro lens on the T6, so it's like a 160 mm.

She took 469 photos! At some point soon I'll feed her a cup of tea and let her look at the good version of them, since all she's seen so far are the JPEG version. Some of those are on her Facebook page, if you can see that.

We all stopped on the way back to admire this woodpecker. For some reason I thought they were small birds. This guy is enormous! It didn't seem to mind the audience, as several people stopped and took photos.

Today is rainy and cool. Autumn is here. It's one of Calgary's best seasons, so I'm excited to get out and find ore photos! Get in touch if you want a ramble buddy.