Bearing Down...

Roger,
I like this. How would we ever see the back side of a critter if all photogs followed those silly rules about what angles are "proper" for photographing animals (especially birds, but also insects and anything anything else with eyes). Some insects can only be identified by seeing those other angles. Keying out dragonfly families often requires a good look at the veins in their wings, and you have done a nice job showing them here. Compositionally, this shot is beautiful, too.

BEHAVIORAL QUESTION: Just looked at your previous post of this DF and read your narrative. Did it actually eat that little spider shell? I'd be interested if you can tell me about it. A dragonfly scavenging would be a highly unusual, as I have never seen any dragonfly stalk anything on foot, especially something that was not alive. In fact, I have never seen one eating anything it did not catch on the wing. Some species, such as most of the skimmers, spend a lot of time perching on twigs, but they spring into the air to hunt. Was it quite cool when you took this? They normally don't fly in cold weather, so I wonder if it might have stumbled on the spider shell and scavenged it opportunistically?

Roger, I agree with the things you yourself like about the image. I like the POV and nice light on the wings as well. The light green area in the BG is a little distracting. Maybe that could be selectively darkened a little without loosing too much of the nice light on the wings.

Nice composition and love the detail in the wings. Also like the soft BG.

an interesting point of view that normally wouldn't thrill me but in this case it is quite captivating

This is an unusual but interesting view of the skimmer. I like the view it gives of him stalking his prey and it also helps show off his beautiful wings, especially with the sunlight hitting them. Like the comp of this with the diagonal branch. and the skimmers wings leaning the opposite diagonal. Great capture, Roger.

Thank you all for your detailed comments. Much appreciate all the feedback. I'll have to give that bright spot a try, which is something I should get better at.

WAYNE: Thanks for all the information about dragonflies. To answer your question, I don't know if it ate the spider. The (other) photo that I posted was the last usable one from the series. I have a couple after it. Then I tried to change position and unintentionally stepped off the deck and landed in the bush. No harm done, but the dragonfly was gone. I have regretted that step more than once. I assumed that it would eat the spider based on the situation. I do not know much about dragonflies at all though I had been wondering how successful a dragonfly could be in getting food by walking up sticks. I did notice that they seemed to prefer dry twigs, on this bush and on another one on the other side of the house. This was a sunny day. I checked the weather record (June 10, 2011): min. 12 deg C and max 25 deg C. The photo was taken at 11:15 am, so I would think the temp was somewhat above 20 deg C. I recall it as being sunny and warm.

Attached is the second last shot from that series (last +/- usable one), very severely cropped. It's quite noisy and unsharp, but maybe the dragonfly's facial expression does indicate whether it intends to take a bite.

Thanks for the update, Roger. Too bad it took off before you could see if it walked past the shed spider skin, or munched on it. It might have been cool to witness "the exception to the rule."

The important thing is that you and your equipment survived the fall, AND you still got some very nice shots!
Enjoy that Sigma 150. It's a super lens.