Having been dragged out of bed by work at a very uncivil hour today I thought I owed it to myself to go for a walk in the late afternoon and try a bit of macro shooting at Moors Valley, just up the road. Although a lovely day it was really quite windy and this made accurate composition, focus and getting a steady subject, rather tricky.
I found very little and packed up the camera and flash after a while, deciding to walk to an area of the park I'd never been to. I was very pleasantly surprised by the woodland, open heath and swampy pools in the northeast area. It looked ideal for darters, chasers and skimmers, but hey, its getting very late in the season!
I saw a little black darter perched on a low stem so grabbed the camera and began to shoot. The wind made this very tricky and I knew I would lose a lot of shots to motion blur.
As usual with darters a careful approach was rewarded with a cooperative dragonfly so after getting a few shots for good measure I began to think about making the most of what I had here:
The stem on which he was perched was relatively isolated from other clutter, giving a rare chance to shoot against an uncluttered background, so to isolate him best I got low and shot at his level. This viewpoint always works with animals as the viewer enters the world of the subject intimately and allows it to dominate.
To get the best chance of sharp shots I knew I had to use reasonable shutter speeds as the wind would ruin anything shot at a speed following the usual rule of 1 divided by effective focal length. I was therefore careful to keep shots at 1/250th minimum for lower magnifications and 1/400th or above for larger magnifications. Dragons have a habit of perching on things that go "boing" with a breath of wind!
To gain a bit of speed I used ISO 400, as the D300 gives great image quality at this setting.
Also to gain speed, but wary of the depth of field, I chose apertures around F7.1 to F9. This allowed sensible shutter speeds but also enough DOF for most shots as they were generally not at full 1:1 magnification.
I set up a shot and waited for brief respites in the wind before actually firing the shutter.
This shows how macro, like any photography, is about recognising the challenge of a situation and juggling the settings to optimize them for the particular situation you are shooting in. This only comes with experience and makes failing valuable if you are humble enough to learn from your mistakes and work around the problems next time. I will often shoot dragonflies at really marginal shutter speeds, especially if using stabilised lenses, but quickly saw this would be hopeless in today's conditions.
I was really happy to get some decent shots from this late season encounter with a gem of a dragonfly. I was certainly reminded how important camera or subject shake is in macro photography and just how easy it is to lose shots, even when you know the problem will occur. Even 1/400th and 1/500th sec were not enough to stop blur on some shots!
So lesson one of today is watch that shutter speed, especially when shooting in natural light.
Oh, and take a different path sometimes...you never know what you may find!
