Somatochlora metallica maleIt is quite hard to shoot dragons on flight, but sometimes you can be lucky. This is shot with 300/4 Nikkor using AF-C. I’m not totally happy with the shot, it’s a bit static – some movement would’ve been nice to capture.
Almost lost-forever-picture of a Scarce Emerald DamselfyThere was a chance for a minor catastrophe today, when my PC’s 320GB Seagate SATA-drive went nuts. Last backup was made about two weeks ago and luckily it has been so anti-photogenic weather that not much shooting has happened after that.
First symptoms were that right after Windows splash screen the system halted and stayed like that. I did a normal reset or forced shutdown and rebooted. Normally it started just fine, but a couple of days ago I had to reboot for more than 10 times to get the system up and running again. – Booting into safe mode always succeeded, so no hardware failure (the HD is also only two months old) but software or driver instead. Run msconfig and took away all the unnecessary services and programs. No go, the system just played with me. Run chkdsk /r and tried to repair the data – some was actually repaired but no change to the situation. I decided to give a fixmbr a try (the program stated that the MBR was not standard or it was broken, bingo..) and that was a really bad idea – that piece of junk messed up the partition table of the HD and there I was, suddenly and painfully realizing the unexistence of the backup file…oh boy that hurt me!
Testdisk was the way to go next but despite of this brilliant software, the partition table was still missing… Then, I remembered the memory cards! Perhaps some of the files were still there and recoverable with the Sandisk Rescue Pro. I gave it a try and found almost all the files I – by this far can remember – had lost!
Lesson learned: Remember to backup your image files right after downloading them into your computer!
What next: I Downloaded Robocopy and its GUI. -Manual is printed and I’m going to give it a try very soon.
These crickets do have a fair camouflage, don’t they :) I’m not capable of saying how amazed I am about all this diversity of the nature! Just take a closer look next time you’re out in the fields :)
It has been a while since my last post – have been busy I guess. The above dragon was shot during Finnish Dragonfly Society’s trip to Tammela and Loppe on 21st July. -Excellent time there, and many new species!
I had some major problems with the composition here :/ The dragon just takes the room it needs and there’s little to do with it. I also made a very basic mistake and left the tripod in the car due to its weight. This is shot handhold and what I miss, is having the whole dragon in the focus. I think this is quite ok even now, but still… Better luck and work next time!
I have often praised Lampinkoski, and this time is not an exception! Small Pincertail was the species I was looking after, and Lampinkoski was the first of two possible places to check. I arrived to the river rested and having a good mood – Quite many keepers from the morning trip and a good nap always beats a bad one ;p
There I was, standing on the shore and searching for pincertails. Suddenly two small, fast and quite promising dragons appeared. Yes! Small Pincertail landed on the riverside rock and I had a chance to verify the ID. I picked my camera, tripod and waders and carefully waded into the river. I took a position near two nice rocks and begun to wait. After 5-10 minutes I had my chances with the dragon and here it is: Dragonfly and its river:
Lake Haukijärvi was my next stop, because I had found some Arctic Bluets there and from the nearby pond Kakkurilammi (which itself was located on the marshland Kakkurilamminneva).
Common Bluet posed for me on my way up to the lake – I have always time if damselflies are co-operative! On the forest I found one female Spearhead Bluet – at least I thought so until closer examination at home. Da-daa: Arctic Bluet female it was! I’m not very excited with the BG, but this is an ok ID picture though.
I found three males and this pose I like the most:
Last but not least: The Black Darter male:
After the day’s shooting and looting I had plenty of pictures, wet rubber boots and even wetter waders. It surely was a good day. Hope you like the pictures!