From the Photographer: Barry Mullin
My wife and I each have a kayak. For several years, we have routinely kayaked on Big Marine Lake, which is between the towns of Forest Lake, Scandia and Marine on St. Croix. Besides the sheer joy of kayaking, I monitor and photograph Loons for the Minnesota DNR. I also observe and photograph the dragonflies and damselflies. The image of two damselflies in tandem was taken June 22, 2016, at 8:06 PM. These damselflies are of species Lestes inaequalis (common name Elegant Spreadwing). The evening was very still and I was sitting in my kayak watching the mating activity of a number of damselflies. This tandem pair conveniently landed on a cattail leaf about five feet in front of my kayak. They were resting before continuing, still in tandem, to deposit eggs in the water . The bottom damselfly is the female being held just behind the head by the male’s claspers.
I onlt do hand held photography from the kayak. For moving subjects or in rough water, I hold the camera In front of me with both hands and use a higher shutter speed and faster ISO to help eliminate motion blur. For this shot, the water was still, so I rested my elbow on the kayak gunnel with the lens mounting plate resting on my palm. This lets me stabilize the camera and hold it for longer than I could if handheld without support. Without using extension tubes, the Tamron 150-600 won’t focus much closer than 12 feet away. This image was cropped to about ¼ its original size. I was really lucky to have other cattail leaves far enough behind to allow them to fully blur to a nice green background.
Photographing from a kayak presents plenty of challenges. The kayak rocks to my movement and to wave action. The kayak is always drifting, so nothing stays a fixed distance away for easy focusing and the kayak often turns away from the desired subject. Murphy’s law dictates that the best action will always be somewhere over your shoulder where you can’t possibly point your camera without tipping over. The dragonflies and damselflies almost constantly fly around and catching them for the few moments they perch is a matter of luck. Focusing is always a challenge due to the small size of the subject and the confusion caused by reeds and cattails swaying in front of and behind the subject.
I am looking forward to photographing more Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) this year.
Technical data: Nikon D7000;Tamron 150-600mm lens at 420mm, 1/250 sec exposure, f13 and ISO 800. VR on
