Things to look out for in the garden - dragonflies and damselflies and how to capture them (on camera)

Stalking and photographing dragonflies and damselflies can be very rewarding as it allows us to develop a small insight into these fascinating and beautiful insects.

Damselflies start to appear in late spring/early summer. The large red damselfly isn't actually large because it's only around an inch long. You need to get close for good detail though, within a couple of inches of the insect and then it will probably sit quite comfortably to be photographed - which means your depth of focus is very narrow. Because of that, long insects are best photographed square-on to their length so that the whole creature is in focus.

The azure damselfly is also quite small, but a very striking blue, this is the one that most often shows up in photographs and is almost always called a dragonfly by mistake! Azures are more easily startled than large reds but have very short attention spans. Get within a couple of feet and just keep moving in slowly and they'll come to think of you as a bit of moving landscape.

Late May or early June starts to see the emergence of dragonflies. The have broader bodies and are much more difficult to film. The trick is to work on a day when there are sunny periods but it's on the cool side, which makes them a little sluggish and so they are easier to approach.

Southern hawker dragonflies are the most spectacular of the dragonflies with wingspans of three to four inches and striking body colours. Like many other insects they seem to have a sort of tolerance zone of about a foot. Once you get inside this zone with the camera then they just aren't bothered at all and you can snap away, before that, especially if your shadow crosses them while you're still quite a distance away, and they'll zoom off.

Garden damselfly photograph by Whiskymac, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

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