Photo Story: Dragonfly Covered in the Morning Dew

Early morning, just after sunrise is a great time to do insect macro photography. Before the morning light warms them up, insects are in a state of torpor (hibernation) that makes them very cooperative subjects.

Dragonfly Covered in the Morning Dew

Insects will also be covered in morning dew that makes for some interesting photographs. This dragonfly is covered in the morning dew and was motionless as I photographed him both with and with a tripod.

The light was just started to rise above the trees putting a golden color on the dragonfly. I replaced the background with one that I had previously taken to remove the distracting leaves and sticks that were in the background. The photo was taken with an aperture of f4.5 but the leaves and sticks still seemed to distract from the dragonfly.

Dragonfly Photo Details

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M1
Lens: Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro Lens
Focal Length: 60mm
ISO: 250
Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/60 of a second
Exposure Compensation: -3/10
Lighting: Sunny Morning

Dragonfly Photo Processing

Cropped the photo in Lightroom 5 and darkened the highlights using the Highlights Slider.
Replaced the background in Photoshop CC 2014 using a layer mask.
Selectively sharpened the image using the Unsharp filter and a layer mask in Photoshop CC.
Used Google Viveza 2 to selectively lighten and darken to the photo.
Used the Lighten / Darken Center Filters in Color Efex 4 to darken the background and highlight the dragonfly as the subject.

Written by Martin Belan

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