General

Dragonflies are most not popular to photograph from most people, but they are one of the easier flying insects because they are predictable. They do fly quickly but once they land, they tend to stick around for a while.   Also, even when they do fly off, they tend to come back to the same place quickly.  I have had in my field of view, take off, and come back almost in the same spot. So, I just wait around and photograph them when they come back which may be several times.  Dragonflies tend to be monotone in color blue, red, other colors, but they have amazing fine detail and structure that a close photograph shows.

Planning My Day

When I am ready to focus on dragonfly photography, the time of day is not as important because they seem to always be around water of some kind.  However, I found that when the sun is not high in the sky, the lighting is better. I usually will set up my tripod and use my full frame or crop camera with the Canon 100-400 lens.  Most of the time dragonflies like to hide in the weeds, so I carry a soft diffused flash with me and use it as needed

Post Processing

I do most of my post process in Adobe Lightroom Classic and the rest in Adobe Photoshop.  Since the ISO for insect photography tends to be high, I use some plugins to save time with the noise reduction, however the technology on how these plugins work today is amazing.  Cropping is an important consideration because the insect is the subject and with a large area around, I do not want any distractions that take the focus away from the subject.