Friday, July 24, 2009

Lord of the Dragonflies!


You've heard of Lord of the Flies. I am starting to feel like the title. I must have done something good to a dragonfly in an earlier life because every time I go out to take photos they come up and pose for me. This one flew up to me on a photo excursion to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm two days ago. I went to take alligator and bird photos and I got a few nice shots I will post later but this little female amber wing dragonfly came up and demanded that I take her picture so I obliged. Amber wings are tiny guys on the order of an inch long. They are fairly common in nature but since they tend to hang out over swamps and ponds a lot of people never see them. To combat their tendency to be bird lunches they have developed the skill of imitating wasps. They fly and sit more in a manner similar to wasps than dragonflies and this fools many predators into leaving them alone.

I took 180 photos at the alligator farm and weeded them down to 5 great shots. One nice thing about digital photography over film photography is you are not always worrying about saving film. I have a 6gb card in my D5000 camera so I can take more than 1000 full size photos. The battery only lasts for around 500 shots before recharging so shot capacity is not a limiting factor and you can snap as many extra shots as necessary to ensure you find that perfect shot.

One thing I found out quickly is that I really need a more powerful telephoto lens. My 18-55mm lens is wonderful for closeup and portrait shots but I missed some potentially wonderful shots of birds because they were just too far away. This weekend I am going up to get a 55-200mm lens so I can cover those far away shots as well. Other than that I am very pleased with the new Nikon D5000 camera. I am still learning the intricacies of it but a lot of my earlier photographic knowledge learning in the stone age film era still applies to this new era of digital photography.

I have a new artist web page to sell photographs at Fine Art America. Right now I am just privately selling uploads of my images for use on websites, magazines, and other use. In the near future I am going to also be selling through their website so I can expand my sales. If interested in a photograph you can contact me at albink@bellsouth.net and I can easily arrange an upload of it for you. I will post a seperate blog post for this at a later time. I am very excited to be able to offer the type of photos I am best at taking rather than just sticking to bland stock photographs for sale on microstock sites. I enjoy taking the type of photos that I would be proud to see framed on my walls so this is what I am offering.

That's about all for now. I am going to be finishing my current batch of photos today and uploading them. Till next time!

4 comments:

Kath Lockett said...

What a magnificent shot!

T - Another Geek Girl said...

That's great Ken!
I'm so glad you decided to stay around and let us know what you're up to.

Beautiful photo by the way.
This is obviously what you were meant to do.

Maybe you were a dragonfly in a past life? Or maybe they just recognize a kindred spirit? That's kind of cool if you think about it.

yonsu said...

enjoyed the photos, especially the dragonflies as I also have taken photos of them. How long have you had the D5000?

Michelle said...

This one may be my favorite. It is really, really good! Wow!