It is now the hot days of summer and I have returned to my fun photography, that is photographing dragonflies and damselflies. For the past few days I've woken up early in the morning and with my trusty 105 macro lens gone out to observe the Odonata. I traveled down to the edge of the lakes, put on my knee boots and look for the various species. I want to get to them before he gets too warm and they get more active otherwise sometimes they get very nervous and will fly at the slightest motion.
Today I even tried to photograph one of the larger species of dragonflies flying over Rico Lake. In order to accomplish this I utilized my 70-200 mm lens and my bird in flight technique. I watched how the dragonflies were flying and noticed that they were following closely to a similar path most of the time. So I pre-focused and then would panning followed and took the pictures. As you can see from the picture I did capture the dragonfly in flight however, it is not the best or sharpest picture. Oh well it'll take more work to try to accomplish this task.

For those of you who are interested in dragonfly photography I recommend a free e-book from photo naturalist which was written by Vic Beraedi. In the book he gives good references to the literature that help you identify which species that the damselflies or dragonfly belong to. For those of you who live in Massachusetts, the state fishing game service has a publication A Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Massachusetts 2nd Edition (2007) by Blair Nikula, Jennifer Loose, and Matthew Burne available-for-sale. If you go to <http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/nhesp/publications/nhesp_pubs.htm> you can download an order sheet to mail away for this publication.
Here are some of my photographs from the last few days.