At a nature preserve I used to live near they have a swamp/wetlands area that in the summer are filled with all kinds of dragonflies! I was able to get this beautiful one with his poor damaged wing perched for a moment!
Anything
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
ISO 800
300mm
f/6.3
1/500
Just convert to jpg and smaller size for download. (I didn’t crop this one, even though I was tempted to!)
Oh dragonflies make such great subjects and I can see why you were drawn to this one. The colors are good, but I think the focus is just a bit off. I’ve tried shooting them with a long lens, too and it really takes practice to get it right (so many shots in the bin!), but keep trying. Even if you don’t get any keepers, you still get to hang out with them.
Vanessa, dragonflies are fun subjects for sure. I’m sure living near wetlands gave you many opportunities to see and photograph them. I agree with Kristen’s comments, as it doesn’t seem quite sharp. Did you shoot it in RAW? If so, it comes out of the camera a bit soft, and you said you didn’t do any editing except to convert to jpg. Just a thought. As for composition, I might would crop into a vertical on this and see how it looks.
Oh! So are you saying that a Raw image by default always comes out soft and you usually always have to do some kind of processing with it, more than just converting for download?
Yes. I find that a touch of sharpening is usually required, as well as maybe some tweaking to contrast, highlights and shadows too maybe, depending on the image. If focused properly, it shouldn’t take much sharpening though.
Thanks Kristen! I think I liked the pose and background so much that I was blind to the fact that the eyes definitely are not in focus!
Thanks Shirley! Knowing that is such a breakthrough for me. I’ve been taking a lot of online courses. And also have the ‘Great Courses’ series with Joel Sartore. I’m sure it was covered but I just never understood.
What kind of focus point strategy are you using? For this kind of small object in a wider field, you might try single area focus or even pinpoint if you have the time (silly bugs are so busy!). Sometimes a multi-spot method misses the small, but critical, area of an object this size in the viewfinder - and you’re right, it’s the eyes! Oh those eyes.
Yeah, I pretty much always have it on single focus, unless I know I’m going to be getting flying birds or some kind of action. My camera isn’t that fancy, I never heard of pinpoint focus! 
But it sounds neat!
I’m not a gear-head, so I have no idea how exclusive this is to my Panasonic G9 or Panasonic/mirrorless cameras in general, but pinpoint is something I have and use mostly with macro or close up work when accuracy is key and DOF narrow. It works in the viewfinder (because it’s an EVF maybe?) and on the screen in the back. Quite useful when I have the luxury of time to use it. Otherwise if I’m handholding or working quickly, single point focus is what I use for this type of shot.
Cool, you have a mirrorless! Yeah, I always handhold. I don’t have a tripod, I probably wouldn’t get one until I could have 2 cameras. I just would hate to miss something because my camera was stuck in place!
Embracing the tripod is a concept that can take a photographer years to come to. It did me. Now its my sharpest lens.
Vanessa, This is a nice view of this old male Blue Dasher. Blue Dashers are very common in the eastern half of the USA and make a fine subject for macro/close-up photography. They can be quite approachable, provided you move in slowly and spend some time waiting for them to get used to your presence. If your lens can focus to 3-4 feet, you can get in closer so the dragonfly occupies more of the frame. The alternative, is to have lots of background (negative space), but then you probably don’t want the subject near the center.
