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"An early September trip to west Texas provided many
opportunities to get some interesting photos. I helped a friend
with his work on a large farm / ranch. When we'd go out to
work on various projects I'd always have my camera with me.
While he was busy harrowing a field, I had some time to kill,
so I spent about an hour photographing dragonflies. It was
hot, the thermometer outside the tractor's cab was indicating
102 degrees.
There was a fairly good (but steamy) breeze blowing and dragonflies
were buzzing back and forth along a barbed wire fence. Occasionally,
they'd land... but only on a barb.... nowhere else. After
working up a pretty good sweat chasing these guys up and down
the fence-line and getting photos of nothing but bugless barbs
and the out-of-focus grass beyond, It dawned on me that there
had to be a better way to approach the problem of getting
any kind of dragonfly images without feeling like I'd just
run a marathon. The solution was quite simple.
I was using a Kodak DX6490 digital camera, which has a good
macro mode. I switched to macro mode, put a 55mm to 52mm adapter
ring on the lens, and attached a Nikon T-4 close-up lens,
followed by a Nikon T-3. This provided a great deal of magnification
and even allowed some use of the zoom. I prefocused on an
empty barb by framing it in the viewfinder, then depressing
the shutter button half way and holding it. This locked both
the autofocus and the autoexposure. I then stood near the
fence with the camera focused, and waited for a dragonfly
to land on the barb I had chosen.
Sometimes I was successful in getting a shot by slowly leaning
over and focusing by moving toward or away from the subject...
firing the shutter as I brought the bug into the plane of
focus. This particular photo was taken by framing and focusing
an empty barb, then having the dragonfly fly into the image,
landing on the barb. By using this method and not having to
fumble with a tripod, I got images I'm very pleased with."
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