Eye of Ra
Marty May 29th, 2007
Common Green Darner - female
Anax junius
Ever since I saw my first one of these huge dragonfly beauties (they measure about 3"/80mm in length), I’ve been trying to get a good shot. The closest I’ve had before this was a flight shot, which you couldn’t really tell what it was. It turns out that the reason is that they rarely perch at all, and their flight speeds reach upward of 55mph (about 85kph). No wonder they’re hard to get in flight.
As I was hiking through Palmyra Cove on Saturday, I spooked one which had been on the ground. After seeing it fly, I figured that my chances of a shot were between slim and none, but I watched, and I saw it land (or rather, so it disappear into a bunch of brush and not come back out). So, I walked rather slowly over to see if I would get lucky.
It took me 5 minutes to find this beauty, hanging from the stem of a low-rising plant. Luckily, she was very patient with me - I was even able to change cameras AND lenses to the macro for this shot. The ‘bulls-eye’ that you see in this picture is one of the field marks of the species - and a rather illustrative one at that.
You can get a look at the full dragonfly here
« See Eye of Ra on Flickr »
- Nature , Photography [ ]
I have to show this to my son, he loves dragon flies and has this uncanny knack to get them to land on him.
Gorgeous shot … I’m glad your persistence paid off.
I just love these guys! And they are not easy to photograph! I thought I might have commented on this but must have been on your flickr picture! I am soo glad she let you get as close as you did! BRAVO