Can you tell a dragonfly and damselfly apart if your life depended on it?

On one of Rainy Vancouver's hottest summer days in 2008 I learned how to tell them apart. With a macro lens permanently fused to my camera I got to spend a beautiful summer morning on Reifel Island south of Vancouver with an abundance of insects, critters and bugs all basking in the summer sun.

↓ Beauty in the detail.

After waiting around for 10-15 minutes I finally got the shot of a bumble bee sitting up in the flower as envisioned.

Looking closely at the digger bee's hind legs, you can see how it uses them to store the flower pollen is has collected.

Butterflies and moths are in the same family, Lepidoptera. The easiest way to tell them apart is to think of moths as less fancy and colorful.

Oh! and the way you tell dragonflies and damselflies apart are by looking at their wings. When a dragonfly is resting its wings are spread out. The opposite is the case for a damselfly that has its wings neatly folded when resting.

When discussing macro photography with other photographers, an often repeated question is: "Did you bring a tripod, use cable release and mirror lockup?" My answer is always: "No, no and no." My advice to the photography interested on the brink of exploring macro photography is the same, that you do not need all of that extra gear for great, light-weight insect and flower photography. And here is why.

Firstly, with just a camera and macro lens you can keep mobile and scavenge from bush to bush seeking out a wide variety of insects, as opposed to sitting in one spot the entire day behind a tripod trying to remember the camera's mirror lockup setting. Secondly, you can 'cheat' so to speak by reducing vibration you inevitably produce in a number of ways. Use faster shutter speed (above 1/200 s), set higher ISO value to get that faster shutter speed if there is not enough available light, use built-in shake reduction either in the lens or camera. The last trick is to move around and line up the insect with your camera's image plane, meaning that as much of the insect as possible is within the set depth of field. An outstanding example is the image just above. If I had just turned a bit more to the left, the front of the lens (representing the image plane) would have been better aligned with the damselfly. And the fly's tail would have been in better focus. Ah well, live and learn.

For the technically interested: Nikon D300 set to ISO 200 exclusively used that day with the Nikkor 105mm VR f2.8 Micro lens mostly set above f5 and faster than 1/200 seconds. Available sunlight as only light source.