Happy Sunday.

As I mentioned a few days ago in the Ruby Meadowhawk post, I have started what appears to be a little love affair with dragonfiles. Suddenly they are everywhere I look, I am taking a lot of pics, and my iPhone Audubon Field Guide to New England, which has a good section on dragonflies, is getting a good workout. Browsing there, a while back, trying to identify a dragonfly I had managed to catch with my camera, I came upon an image of the Black Saddlebags…one of the larger and showier of the New England dragonflies (found everywhere in the US east of the Rockies, as a matter of fact). Okay, so I want to catch an image of one of those! I saw a few in the air earlier in the summer during my rambles, but they never settled for a pic. Of course that just made me want one more. It turns out those early flies may have been vagrants from the south. The Saddlebags only reach adult stage in late summer here in Maine, so this specimen is most likely newly awing. And clearly more cooperative.

I saw it cross the beach and settle a the edge of the beach rose on the dunes (I was chanting “land, land, land” the whole way), but by the time I got there the Saddlebags had moved in a few yards. I had to maneuver among the rose bushes to get a shot. It was sitting in full sun, but deeper in among twigs and grass stems, and there was no clear shot that showed the full bug. The only way to get a full body shot was to stand in my own light and shoot the dragonfly in my shadow. I was pretty sure that as soon as my shadow touched it it would be up and away…but it sat.

And here is a full sun shot for contrast.

One spectacular bug!

Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up mode with the zoom setting overriden. 1) 403mm equivalent field of view, f5.6 @ 1/80th @ ISO 400. 2) 538mm, f5.7 @ 1/40th @ ISO 200. 3) 499mm, f5.7 @ 1/250th @ ISO 160.

Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. 1) and 2) adjusted for color temperature and Vibrance to more closely match the balance of 3).

Sunday thought: Every time I look at these images in the future, I will remember the thrill of taking them…and the feeling of deep gratitude and crazy joy that lasted all the way back to the car after. Right now, writing about it, and looking at the images, that same feeling is there, just behind the words. I am grinning here. I will probably take better pics of Saddlebags in the future…but these will always be special. Special in part because of the anticipation…because of wanting them since I saw the first Saddlebags in my reference and on the wing…and special because I had to dodge rose bush thorns to get them…but most special because of the feeling of being in the right place at the right time and ready for the blessing. No credit to me. The joy of these shots has nothing to to with self-satisfaction…it has everything to do with appreciation of the gift. (And not “my gift” as in “a gifted photographer”…but something I have not earned, and don’t deserve…an outright gift from someone who loves me.) While taking the images I was, of course, concentrating on angles, light values, zoom settings, and all the technical stuff of photography…and holding my breath (almost literally) lest the bug fly…but in a sense I was also totally absent from myself…completely caught up in the wonder of the moment. And when I stepped back down off the dune to return to the car, I was only aware of the gift. And grinning like…well…like a very happy man (or maybe boy). And that is what it is all about. Photography. Nature study. My new love affair with dragonfiles. To be so gifted I can only grin.