Kilroy Was Here - a photo on Flickriver

Kilroy Was Here

            I was trying to get a shot of this little one on a pondside shrub leaf, but conditions weren't ideal; the light was relatively low & there were unpredictable gusts of wind.  I reached out slowly with my left hand to try to steady the branch, but she lifted off -- and landed right on my shutter finger!

I transferred the camera to my left hand and worked the shutter button with my left thumb.  The problem was that the camera's wrist strap was still around my right wrist, & with it attached like that I couldn't get the camera far enough away from the subject.  It's is a little Olympus prosumer; pretty good, but the closest it will focus is 20cm.   And getting it to autofocus on the subject is often extremely frustrating.  (It has a manual focus, but it's a kludgy menu-driven interface that is next to useless.)  I just could not seem to get it to focus on the finger & damselfly, whether because it was too close or because the autofocus was just being more obstreperous than usual (which is pretty bloody  obstreperous) I don't know.

So I decided I needed to extricate my right hand from the wrist strap.  Moving very slowly, I opened the loop up as wide as possible & passed it over the hand, up & over the finger with damselfly.  Amazingly, she didn't budge!  After that it was a lot easier, but the camera still didn't want to autofocus on this subject.

I was very lucky to finally get this shot -- I took a couple of dozen, & this one, with this incredibly cute pose ("cute" is not a word I normally associate with insects, but there you have it) is the only one that came out.    

(Note for other Olympus users: I'm not talking about the big neck strap that came with the camera.  I decided it was just too much strap for the camera, so I put the little wrist strap from my old Nikon film point & shoot on it instead.)

Some rights reserved

Taken in: United States / New Jersey / New Brunswick (show map)

Taken on: July 30, 2005

Tags:

unidentified

Enallagma

Zygoptera

damselfly

Odonata

hand

finger

Johnson Park

Highland Park

New Jersey

kilroy

kilroy was here

wow!

FC.DF

Animal Encounters Single

insect

fauna

July

teneral

100v+10f

Middlesex County « less

Sets appears in: • Most Faved • Most Viewed more » • Most Interesting • Dragonflies • Critters in the hand « less

Groups appears in: • Serendipity • Dragonflies more » • Most Difficult • WOW: commented with wow • World in your hand • 100 views + 10 favourites (unlimited) • Bug On Flow3r! - a sanctuary • Kilroy Was Here • Insects in your hand! • Damselflies • Highland Park • Animal Encounters Reader • Kilroy Was Here and liked it • Damselflies from around the world « less

Camera: OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTD C3040Z, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, 21mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTD C3040Z
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal Length:	21mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	v354u-76
Show full info

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