Dragonfly in monsoon

by Ravi
(Mumbai)

I went for a photowalk along with Nikon team here in Mumbai. The place was a nature park and the theme was Birds and Macro. I did not have the type of lenses for both the genres.

I shot this image with my 35mm 1.8G. The dragonfly was patient enough and persisted there perched up while several others including me went about shooting it.

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They say you should never work with children or animals ... or insects! That said, every now and then there's one or two that play ball.

Before I get into that, why not work with animals? Well, the obvious answer is that they don't do what you want them to do.

It's why hardened wildlife photographers build themselves little hides, deep in the wilderness, and camp out for days at a time in there waiting for the animals to come along.

I think some of them have been waiting so long for the perfect shot that they aren't even aware the world's gone digital ;-)

But back to Ravi's dragonfly, that clearly wansn't camera shy...

One thing to like about this photo is the shallow depth of field. This makes the dragonfly pin-sharp, and the background nice and soft.

The ability to produce a shallow depth of field like this remains one advantage of digital SLR cameras over compact cameras, but the gap there is closing - there are even smartphones available now where, with a bit of in-built software wizardry, a shallow depth of field can be created. It's still not quite as good as the real thing, but give it time...

Another thing to like about Ravi's photo is that the background is uncluttered. This brings the dragonfly right out there as the focal point.

If there's anything to change? Well, personally, I think there's too much empty space on the left of the photo. I think the composition could be improved by using a square crop.

The square crop is so underused these days. I guess because all cameras give us rectangular images straight off the memory card and we don't think to change them.

Anyway, I feel a square crop, to remove some of the space on the left, would make for a really cracking image.

All in all though, good photo Ravi! And thanks for the submission,

Darrell.

My son (that's him below) loves F1. He's started his own YouTube channel and would love it if you could take a look at one or two of his videos.
Or, if it hurts your ears as much as it does mine, pass the link on to someone who'll really appreciate it.

(probably someone a lot younger than I am!)

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