A brief visit to Old Moor RSPB reserve today didn’t yield much in the way of bird photography but we came across this newly emerged four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) whose wings were just about dry but it didn’t quite have the power of flight. This meant we could take our time in terms of photographing the insect but macro work is never easy at the best of times and the constant breeze made the job twice as hard. With subjects like this, it is imperative to be parallel to the subject to retain as much depth of field as possible. The wind, however, was causing the insect to droop its wings forward a little and at these magnifications, just those few millimeters shift causes a huge loss in focus. Here are four images that I like and they were photographed using a variety of lenses, namely a 14-24mm, a 105mm macro and a 500mm with around a yard of extension tubes to drop the minimum focus distance!
.jpg "four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) nature photography")
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)
.jpg "four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) wildlife photographer west Yorkshire")
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)
.jpg "Wildlife and landscape photographer Yorkshire")
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)
.jpg "John Gardner wildlife and landscape photographer")
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata)
four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) at RSPB old Moor wetlands by Yorkshire landscape and wildlife photographer John Gardner. Nature photography in the UK
