Dragonflies of Sri Lanka - #03 Wandering Glider

Summer Holiday was at its end. I was out that afternoon looking out for something suitable to photograph. When my younger brother found this lonely male Wandering Glider (also known as globe skimmer) Dragonfly sitting on a burnt out stem of grass. It is the most commonly migrated dragonfly seen in huge swarms just before and after monsoons. But photographing a dragonfly is always tricky than taking photos of a butterfly. Due to frequent burning the place I was shooting was looking like a war zone. As the sun was beating down harshly on the dragonfly I used a low light camera settings to give the image a dark shadowy look. Unfortunately I could not avoid the nearby dark branches in the backdrop.

I needed a small aperture to get all the wing details in focus and used my old Japanese 28-115mm DIA Metal Tripod to stabilize the Camera. This also lead to the background coming into focus. If I had used wider aperture and resultant very shallow depth of field as I showed in my last photo then wing details of the dragonfly would not have been visible that well. It is a rule every photographer needs to go through to get optimum results. Visualizing your photo before it is taken is the key here.

ISO-400  f/5.6 1/640sec