Story Behind Image

Familiar Bluet Damselfly - The Story Behind the Image /  by Todd Henson

Final image of Familiar Bluet Damselfly

I’d been hiking through a park looking for insects to photograph. I observed and made images of dragonflies, spiders, butterflies, and moths, but I was most drawn to the light blue Familiar Bluet damselfly. Damselflies are fascinating creatures. They are smaller and more delicate than dragonflies, but otherwise look similar. The Familiar Bluet is light blue with patches and stripes of black. It has a long, straight abdomen that can be quite flexible.

What drew me to the Familiar Bluet this day was the nice contrast of the blue damselfly in front of a pale green background of out of focus plants. So I started looking for damselflies with good poses in front of workable backgrounds. The first couple images I made did show the damselfly against a green background, but the background was somewhat busy with blades of grass crossing the frame.

Familiar Bluet Damselfly against distracting background

Better background, but still distracting

Another image I made has the damselfly posed on a curling leaf. The damselfly looks good, but it’s not a very attractive leaf, with several holes and dark spots. One of the holes is lined up with the head of the damselfly, which I find distracting.

Familiar Bluet Damselfly on leaf. Still not what I'm looking for.

Finally, I found a background that seemed more promising. The damselfly had landed on a plant with small narrow leaves that in some ways reminded me of the damselfly’s narrow body. But my first images in this environment had a busy background with a large branch directly behind the damselfly. I found the light areas of the branch distracting, so I kept looking for a different position, watching and waiting as the damselfly would fly from perch to perch.

Familiar Bluet Damselfly. Getting better.

The key to these situations is patience. Stay in one area for a while. Work the scene. Watch the behavior of the insects. Observe how they sometimes return to the same perch over and over again. If this perch happens to be a good one then set up the camera aimed at the perch. Get everything ready and then wait for the insect to return. It often will. That’s what occurred in this situation. I’d found what I felt was an attractive perch. The perch was far enough from most of the rest of the background to keep the background nicely out of focus. The background was light green that contrasted well with the light blue of the Familiar Bluet damselfly. I was able to line up the damselfly parallel enough with the focal plane of the camera to get most all of it in reasonable focus. I’d also stopped down the aperture to f/13 to help give me enough depth of field to cover the damselfly but not too much of the background. This proved to be the image I was most pleased with.

Final image of Familiar Bluet Damselfly.

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Lotus Flower And Bumble Bee - The Story Behind the Image /  by Todd Henson

Image of Lotus Flower with Bumble Bee against green background

Each year Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens grows ponds full of lotus plants. These plants bloom during the typically hot, humid summer. If you happen to be there on the right type of day, especially early in the morning when the sun is low and the light is soft, you can create some very nice images. When the lotus flowers are open and the sun backlights the flowers they glow a beautiful pink color.

This particular morning I had found a nice looking flower with a large green leaf behind it. The leaf almost perfectly framed the pink flower, providing a striking contrast between the green and red/pink. The sun was behind the lotus and the sky was cloudy giving off a soft light that provided the glow I was after. After lining up the flower with the leaf in the background I waited. Bumble bees were flying from flower to flower, and my goal was to capture a bumble bee in flight above the lotus. Depth of field was a challenge. I was shooting wide open with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and a 2x teleconverter giving me an aperture of f/5.6. This was to assure the background was just a soft out of focus area of green tones. There wasn’t a lot of light and I kept the ISO at 200 giving me a shutter speed of 1/250 second. I probably should have raised the ISO for a faster shutter speed to increase my odds of capturing a flying bumble bee in focus.

Strangely enough, the very first image I made was my favorite of that session. It captured a mostly in focus bumble bee with a nice orange batch of pollen, wings in motion, just over the core of the lotus flower and between two pink petals. I kept photographing, trying to improve on the first image, but none of the following images captured to me, what the first image had. Below is a selection of some of the other unprocessed images. In several cases I only captured part of the bee. In some it was more out of focus. In a couple the bee was above the flower with green background. I much preferred the bee against the soft pink/white background. It helped the bee pop out just as the pink of the flower against the green background helped the flower pop.

Sometimes you get lucky, as I did this time, and you capture your favorite image the first time. But more often than not the best image doesn’t come until later, after you’ve made a number of photos, perhaps tried different perspectives, changed angle, tried different focal lengths, apertures, shutter speeds. So even if you think you’ve captured a great image it almost always pays to keep photographing, keep experimenting, keep practicing. And always be aware of the light. Without the right light this image would not have worked.

To process the final image I darkened the background a bit, adding a vignette to help focus the eye on the glowing lotus flower. I increased the vibrance just a touch to accentuate the pinks and yellows, and added a slight tone curve to provide a bit more contrast. I felt this image was nice enough out of camera it didn’t require much processing. Below is the final image.

Final image of Lotus Flower and Bumble Bee

 

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Green Frog - The Story Behind the Image /  by Todd Henson

Portrait of a Green Frog

I was hiking through Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge on a late April afternoon with a group of friends. We were there to photograph a pair of nesting osprey who had built a nest atop a duck blind in the bay just off one of the trails. It was a great location that provided very good views of the osprey and the nest, and it worked for both morning and afternoon light. Morning light lit up one side of the nest and afternoon light lit up the other.

When we’d finishing photographing the osprey we continued down the trail. These types of locations can be hit or miss, you never really know what you might encounter. Before the osprey nest we’d found a northern black racer snake moving from the brush towards us on the trail. After the osprey nest we watched and photographed a pair of red-breasted merganser diving for fish in the bay. But the next encounter, a lone green frog, is the subject of this story.

We were walking along one of the trails heading back to the parking lot, as it was getting close to the time the gates of the refuge automatically close for the night. The trail splits two wetland areas and runs along marshy terrain. This stretch is often more humid and bug-ridden than some of the other trails, with flying biting bugs and ticks on the grass along the trail. The trail itself is a service road with a patch of grass between the two tire trails. Halfway along this trail we ran into a lone green frog sitting in the middle of one of the tire trails. Honestly, I didn’t even notice the frog. I’d been watching the treeline for birds. But one my friends spotted the frog and started photographing it.

One of the early lessons I learned in wildlife photography is to capture an image early if the shutter sound won’t scare off whatever you’re photographing. This assures you get a shot, even if it’s not the best shot possible. I like to both document wildlife and try to produce the most pleasing photographs I can. So I document first, then take the time to create a pleasing image if the wildlife decides to stick around.

The green frog proved very accommodating. The first photograph I made was from full tripod height looking down on the frog. This was the documentary shot. Even if the frog hopped back into the brush I had an image. I was using a Nikon 200-400mm f/4 lens with a 1.4x teleconverter on a Nikon D300 camera body. With the teleconverter the lens has a focal range of 280-560mm. For the first shot I had the lens zoomed out to 550mm at an aperture of f/8. The ISO was at 500 giving me a shutter speed of 1/100 sec. That’s a little slow for 550mm but the subject was not moving and I was on a tripod.

Green Frog. First attempt, assuring I can at least document having seen the species.

When the frog continued to pose, never moving, I took my camera off the tripod and got down near the ground to try to capture a more pleasing image. Being lower and at less of an angle allowed me to capture more of the frog in focus. I also stopped the aperture down to f/11 and raised the ISO to 640 giving me a shutter speed of 1/80 sec. The photo is still angled slightly askew, but I like the image better than the first one.

Green Frog. Second Attempt. Getting better.

I felt I could still do better. So I lay down on the grass in the middle of the trail and placed my camera and lens on the gravel, as low as they could possibly go. I also inched a little closer to the frog and made sure the frame was level. This put me at 330mm, still at ISO 640 with an aperture of f/8 and a shutter speed now at 1/160 sec. This resulted in the third and final image, the one I’m most pleased with. Being parallel to the frog allowed me to keep most of the frog in focus. Being at the same level as the frog, ground level, allowed me to throw the background completely out of focus which helps the frog really stand out.

Portrait of a Green Frog. Final Image.

Having captured what I felt was a really nice image I put the camera back on the tripod and we all headed towards the parking lot. Remember how I mentioned the bugs along the trail? I was so engrossed in photographing the green frog I never thought to look for ticks in the grass I was laying in. When we reached the parking lot one of my friends stopped me and came over to look at my face. He found a tick right between my eyes. Thankfully, it hadn’t been there long so he was easily able to remove it. I was amazed I hadn’t felt it, but then again, I’ve never felt any of the ticks that’ve bit me.

So when the day was finished I’d had a very enjoyable hike with a group of friends and created at least one photograph I was very happy with. And I was able to learn a couple lessons along the way, which is always a good thing. First off, always check yourself for ticks when returning from a hike. If you can remove the ticks quickly you’re far less likely to contract any of the diseases they can carry. The second lesson was related to the final photograph. If I were to do it again I would likely stop down the aperture a bit more, perhaps to f/11, to try to capture a little more depth of field, giving me more of the frog in focus.

The final version of Portrait of a Green Frog is available for purchase as wall art or on a variety of products.

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