Dangerous Dragon, Beautiful Butterflies, Death of a Dragonfly.
Hello,
Recently, the SE Qld weather hasn’t provide me with many opportunities for astronomical viewing let alone astrophotography, so I’ve been playing around with CS3 by processing some photos from recent day trips which tended to be quite overcast. Hope I haven’t overdone the saturation boost!
Water Dragon – 400mm 1/500 @ F8 ISO400
Butterflies – 200mm 1/250 @ F5 ISO400
Water Lily - 200mm 1/640 @ F8 ISO400
Willy Wagtail - 200mm 1/320 @ F5.6 ISO400
Water Lily – 400mm 1/500 @ F8 ISO100
Dragonfly and Lily - 400mm 1/500 @ F8 ISO100
Taken in Toohey Forest and Mount Coot-tha. The Water Dragon lives under our house!
Geat pics Dennis , does the water dragon get a good feed under the house ?
Cheers Kev.
Hi Kev,
Thanks! The water dragon just lives rent free under our house and each morning, snacks around the pool on various insects or other stuff it can find, then in the afternoon takes a stroll down to the local creek before returning to the house for bedtime, around 5:00pm.
We’ve followed the trail left by its tail in the loose soil, and it looks like the dragon is kipping amongst a pile of junk under the house.
We didn’t want the creature to become tame, so although he/she has got a little used to use in the garden, and watches us swim in the pool from the pool side, it’s still wary if we accidentally get too close when we are out of the water.
We have heard the occasional “plop” when it dives into the pool for a swim! It is really nice that we can live so close to native wildlife!
Great collection of images Dennis. Like David said, I like em all.
I don't think I've seen that species of butterfly before - I assume they were at Toohey Forest?
Great collection of images Dennis. Like David said, I like em all.
I don't think I've seen that species of butterfly before - I assume they were at Toohey Forest?
Cheers,
Stephen
Thanks Stephen! Yes, we walk there reasonably frequently and often see these delightful creatures busily flitting around some of the lesser walked paths. They are very mobile and only settle briefly, so they had appeared quite elusive until this pair parked itself when I happened to have the 40D and 70-200 F4 L at hand. This was some 500m into the forest off Monash Road/Isabella Street.
I managed to squeeze off half a dozen shots and this was the best of the bunch. The IS really comes into its own when in the shade, even though Toohey Forest is reasonably open and thin in terms of the canopy.
All of these are fantastic! One minor gripe, though: would love to have seen all of the dragon in the frame, the cut tail is a little distracting, to my eye, at least.
I really like the composition in the third image. And, the rest of them are composed and framed wonderfully, with just the right saturation, too.
Thanks H – I appreciate you dropping by and providing a critique.
Yes, with the water dragon I struggled with the tail – to crop or not? As it was out of focus due to the relatively shallow depth of field, I cropped it to focus more attention on the gaping mouth.
But, I also struggled with the original crop, thinking that it wasn’t tight enough; that is, maybe I should crop tighter, head and shoulders only.
Anyhow, without further ado, here is the full frame, re-sized down to 1024 pixels. I'm getting plenty of Photoshop practice with the weeks continuous rain we've had here is SE Qld.
Breathtaking
