Just a quick pic from tonight – more will be along, but probably not until it’s technically ‘tomorrow’ at least.
Anyway, inspecting the yard by headlamp, I came across a sleeping dragonfly, a blue dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) on one of the gardenia bushes.
Dragonflies cannot see well enough to hunt at night, plus they need a lot of heat for their wing muscles to work (which is why they always perch in bright sunlight,) so this one was in place for the night. In my experience, they will fly if disturbed, but usually slowly (if you can imagine that) and only until they find another spot to cling to, so I’m surmising their night vision is crappy.
But that’s not what this post is about (coulda fooled you, eh?) Instead, it’s bragging about the Mamiya 80mm macro that serves as my workhorse, even though I’m not using a Mamiya camera. Because now we go in for the closeup, and this is not quite full resolution.
Shot freehand but with the macro flash rig, and not even using the dedicated extension tube that allows much more magnification. Sure, I gotta manually focus and close the aperture down, but I’ve been doing that for, what, ten years or more now? I’m coping, it appears.