Dragonfly hunting

Tis the season for dragonflies. Fish Creek usually has a ton of them this time of year. They came to mind as I was taking some bottles back to the depot. Just as I was getting in my car a huge blue dragonfly hovered in front of me, almost close enough to touch. Once home I got the camera and headed into the park. More dragonflies awaited me in the parking lot. I took this as a good omen.

It turned out there were lots of dragonflies near bridge 2, but I was rusty. Out of 842 'photos' I only liked a couple enough to edit, and those were only just barely. Sean mentioned he wanted in on the dragonfly action so we met up on Sunday afternoon. I showed him the secret way into the park, and we hung out on a gravel bar for a couple hours shooting our brains out. At least I did. From there we strolled east, pausing to shoot more along the way, then up and out of the park. In a burst of normality we hit a nearby pub for a beer and a late lunch. As always, the company was enjoyable.

This time was 900 photos, plus a trick I learned in Lightroom, and I ended up with about 30 photos edited. I'm pretty pleased, though the in flight shots are not as clear as I'd like. It turns out I should have brought my 100 mm lens, since we managed to find several dragonflies hanging out and relaxing on an object. I was using a 70-200 and there's a limit how close I can get to focus.

What was fun is that someone spent a lot of time sculpting the rocks in the river to make a little channel. It's quite different from when I was there a few weeks ago. That's one of the joys about visiting the park, there's always something different.

In other news, there's an appointment this afternoon, and so maybe tomorrow you'll hear more about the Borg update.

Here's a couple of the shots from the day, and I think I'll add dragonflies into the Of the Day feature while they last. This one was on the path on the way into the park. Another good omen.

The revised creek. In the distance you can see a log. It used to be quite a ways up on the bank. It's big enough that it probably took a half dozen husky people to move. It's not quite as good as the old dragon spine tree for posing a model on, but it would be ok if the river was calm because, reflections.

Sean hard at it.

Another dragonfly relaxing in the sun.

And the first half decent shot of a dragonfly in flight.

Of the Day

Driftwood, but first a serendipity bee. I'm pretty sure this as been blogged, but I don't think I'm going to get any complaints.

Flower

Peony

Lily

Artsy, but first a moody serendipity from Doubtful Sound.

The smokey light was like this for only a few seconds and I got lucky.

Linda, but first a close up of what I think are alliums.

Retro

A nice sunset cloudscape taken from my driveway looking south. This is straight from the camera.

And edited. This is why the cloudscape shots typically don't end up on the image of the month lists. It's too easy to make them look far more dramatic than they are. I don't think photographers would call this overbaked, but it wouldn't take much to push it over the line.