1/200sec 250mm f/5.6 ISO 100

I am continually amazed by the fact that trying to find a photo is so much harder than just letting them come to you. I went on a drive today and found nothing. The moment I pulled into my driveway, there it sat, a dragonfly on the reflector. I quickly attached my telephoto to my camera and slowly, but surely made my way out of the car. As I approached from a distance I lined up a few shots and fired away. It was actually much more difficult to focus on this little bug with that solid reflector below it. I kept moving around towards the right, each time scaring off the dragonfly, only for it to come flying back and landing in the same exact spot. I had to switch a lot between manual focus and auto focus. It sucks when you go from a USM motor lens with real time manual focus (or whatever they call it) to a lens without it. As a result, this image, one of many, came out a bit out of focus. Increasing the aperture value might have made things easier, but then you don’t get that BOKEH! I still had my circular polarizing filter on, which I think created that weird variation in the sky.

In post, I played around A LOT with this image. First off I gave a bright yellow and blue color tone with more emphasis on the blue. I added grain, and tried to sharpen the image a bit more. The other big thing I did was played with a lot of the coloring. I tried to bring out as much as I could of the actual dragonfly. I actually like that the filter made that weird background, because it almost encircles the dragonfly to highlight it more.

The one thing I noticed after processing this photo was the color combinations. It looks like an upside-down traffic light. Fun stuff.

Until tomorrow.