Dragonfly – The wrong lens again

This is an image that I never intended to take, however I am quite pleased with how it came out.

The day started and I had arranged to meet a friend, Angie, to go to try and see an Osprey that had been showing at a local nature reserve for the past month or so. I knew there was one around as it had been seen at another nature reserve nearby, but just wasn’t sure where it had been spending most of it’s time, well not until a few images started popping up of it.

As our thoughts were now that it was well known where it was, we knew it was going to be busy, so an early morning meet up was hastily arranged, this is where things started to go wrong as unfortunately I didn’t make it to site until 06:30 and having walked to hide 2 I found it was standing room only, also some of the others whom had seats had said it had been around earlier but disappeared.

I decided as the main hide where the Osprey had been seen from was busy that I’d go around the lake to see if there were any other vantage points with which to see the bird if indeed it returned. Luckily a walk up to the top of the lake gave me a position whereby I could see the full length of the lake I also noticed that I had a good view of one of the trees that I recognised from some photos that had appeared online…unfortunately for me the wind was coming into this corner and whilst it wasn’t strong it certainly had a chill about it.

Now usually I am quite good at sitting or standing for that matter and doing nothing, some say I would make a good road worker – for those that don’t understand the reference, many years ago you would always see people digging up roads repairing pipes and what not and invariable there would be 6 people stood around the hole looking into it with one poor person actually in the hole doing all the work…. Anyway I digress.

Around three hours later, Angie had been messaging me saying there was space to sit in the hide as some had got fed up of waiting, I was a bit dubious about going to the hide as they are quite small so you always end up with the same shots as everyone else – something I am not so bothered about. But I was bloody cold to say the least and at least being sat in the hide I would be sheltered from the wind.

Two hours later still sat in the hide, drank my coffee, had something to eat and still no sign of anything, even the good head of kingfishers that are on this lake were not out and about, we decided to go for a walk to see what else we could find.

Now I only generally take one camera and lens out with me and I was regretting this as we got round the other side of the lake as it was crazy with dragonfly’s, I’d only got my 150-400 f4.5 on, but if I’m honest the sun was out on this side of the lake and there was no way I was going to get close with a macro as everything was too flighty.

Anyway after tyring and failing with a few shots, how the hell do they know when you are about to press the shutter button so they fly off – guess next time I’ll use pro-capture, still reckon they’ll know though. Anyway this particular dragonfly stood out as it was very pale in colour compared to the rest and luckily for me it just stayed long enough to get the shot you see – must admit the Olympus gear never ceases to amaze with the quality of some of its images, even if I was using the wrong lens.