Dragonfly Portrait

 By André Costantini

I recently had an encounter with a very cooperative dragonfly who gave me a generous amount of time to shoot its portrait. The two images posted here are of the exact same subject but with completely different backgrounds and lighting. This was achieved by literally walking around our subject roughly 180 degrees. Being aware of your background is one of the most important elements in macro photography. This can be overlooked sometimes when you are concentrating on the subject. But as you can see from these two images which have a very different feeling that this element is not to be overlooked. Other factors which affect macro photography involve critical focus because of the limited depth of field (how much of your image is in focus) that you have. The closer you get to a subject the less depth of field that is available. So when shooting macro subjects your depth of field drops off quickly even when you have a small aperture.

Both images were taken with the Tamron SP 70-300 f4.0-5.6 DI VC lens at the 300mm end with minimum focus distance being used to achieve 1:4 magnification. The green background image was f9.0 at 1/200th of a second. The gray background was f25 at 1/200 of a second. Though the light and the subject are the same, note how the exposure is significantly different. In the green image, I am exposing for the shadow side and in the gray image I am exposing for the highlight. This required me to make exposure adjustments from what the cameras meter thought; overexposing on the green and underexposing on the gray.

Remember to explore different angles for your subject, not only does it affect your background, but will affect the lighting in your image. Sometimes the first image you see is the best, but other times looking at the alternatives will yield a more compelling image.