Calopteryx splendens - Banded Demoiselle - male and female

[Bruce Williams]

Hi folks,

I've been having a tidy up of my hard disk and just found these photos of the Banded Demoiselle (damselfly) that I took with the Fuji 6900 back in June 2004. I had to do a bit of wading to get to these pics and the job was not made any easier by my Hungarian Vizsla (Maggy) who was hugely excited to see her "dad" standing up to his knees in the river.

In my opinion both male and female are insects worthy of their specific name "splendens". The male is metalic blue and the female is metalic green.

Bruce

Male


[EDIT] I have since modified the above pic of the male in response to some helpful critisism. You can view the modified version by clicking the following link (comments welcome):

http://brucewilliams.ifastnet.com/banded_male_leaf.jpg

Female


Female (close-up)

[MacroLuv]

Very nice!
But third photo looks jaggy like it has more pixels then original.

[Moebius]

Bruce,

I agree with MacroLuv. The closeup pic almost looked oversharpened or something. I love the noncloseup view of that subject though In the first pic, the subject is beautiful, but the hot leaf detracts somewhat.

Ken Nelson

[Bruce Williams]

Thanks for your comments guys.

Nikola,

Hmmmm... I absolutely agree with you that the close-up does look "over-processed" - but I'm not sure why? It's just a straight, unresized crop from the original photo with a small amount of levels adjustment and a tiny amount of brushed sharpening over the head and thorax (no general USM at all). I've compared back to the original 3 megapixel file and I suspect that the image as shot is just not of high enough quality to display well at full size.

Ken,

Yes that over-exposed leaf does detract somewhat from the overall image. Motivated by your comments I've had a play in Photoshop using levels with "blend mode = darken" over the top of a leaf (cropped, resized and rotated) from another damselfly photo. I'd appreciate your comments:

http://brucewilliams.ifastnet.com/banded_male_leaf.jpg

Bruce

[Moebius]

Bruce,

Huge difference and a big improvement. I will have to look for that "blend mode - darken" myself. You say it is in levels? Also, I know how to sharpen the whole pic, but am familiar with brush sharpening....looks like I have learned a couple new things today....will have to go research now.

Ken Nelson

[beetleman]

I think the first two are great...remember, these things do not stay in one place for long so you have to go with the gusto. The third picture I guess is just over enlarged.