Hi Angela. First I would like to welcome you to NPN. This is truly a great site to be a part of, in my opinion. I know my photography has grown while being a member here. I love taking photos of Dragonflies. Sometimes they are patient and let us photographers get into their face to photograph them. Other times, they shy away. I love to get them face on, hence, sometimes they don’t appreciate a camera and lens too close. If shooting a side shot, like this one, it is good to try to be as parallel to the subject as possible, because when shooting subjects this close, we have very little sharpness area to work with. It is always good to provide the settings used, and even type of equipment, so NPN members can provide a better critique. Your image is coming up small here (the size should be around 1500 pixels on the long side), so it is kind of hard to view it where we can provide a good evaluation. The bright background is a bit too bright, so if you have some kind of photo editing software, I would recommend toning that down. I’m sorry I can’t help you any more than that. I am looking forward to seeing more of you photos, and encourage you to keep shooting those Dragonflies. I find macro photography to be light shooing a different universe, when you get in close and see the details of tiny creatures and plants.
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Angela, welcome to NPN. Photographing the small but beautiful insects that populate our world is tons of fun as well as extremely challenging. You don’t say what camera/lens was used to take this, which makes suggesting improvements difficult. There are two things that come to mind immediately. First, because of the limited depth-of-fields that stalks macro/close-up photography, it’s usually best to have the eyes sharp. A view from behind like this one is one of those times, where getting the thorax and where the wings meet the thorax sharp. It’s also usually best, to show all the legs and a little bit of extra space. As an exception, when you’re in very close, not showing all of the critter can work well to focus the viewing on a particular part of the insect.
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