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!