~Post Emergence Focus Stacked Common Darter (♀)~

Well I got to the Memorial Gardens for just after nine this morning and there were already a good half dozen Common Darters in the final stages of emergence, but I did find this pretty little lady that was mid emergence, so I got a load of shots of her hanging out of her exuviae, I even got a couple of shots of her pulling herself out of her exuviae. It was quite tricky as she was on the wrong side of the wall of the fountain and just above the water line, I must have looked a right nutter leaning over the wall of the fountain, camera in hand and arm in water LOL :o)

Then I thought, hey lets try a handheld focus stack, so here it is a 34 image natural light focus stack using F/9 and ISO 500 in bright natural light, I was averaging a shutter speed of !/800. This took ages to edit though, the main reason was she was starting to pulsate, if you watch a Dragonfly pumping up its wings and abdomen you can see it pulsating or if you will pumping to inflate those wings. So this caused quite a few movement problems, she was also nodding that head quite a bit as well :o)

The white strands you can see were used to connect the developing Dragonflies spiracles to the gills in the tail end of the exuviae/nymph, Dragonfly nymphs breath through these tail end gills under water and when they emerge the tubes that connect the gills to the spiracles stretch and eventually break off allowing the Dragonfly to be able to start breathing directly through its spiracles. (I think that's right)

Anyway, quite pleased with the results, this is a female by the way starting her new life :o)

My last video is here :o)
www.flickr.com/photos/odonataman/9472398924/in/photostream/

actual emergence video here :-
www.flickr.com/photos/odonataman/9509318393/in/photostream/

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Taken in: United Kingdom / England / Nottingham / Meadows (show map)

Taken on: August 11, 2013

Tags:

Common Darter

Sympetrum striolatum

Anisoptera

Odonata

Nottingham

Edward Nurcombe

Victoria Embankment

Memorial Gardens

Eddie The Bugman

Natural Iight

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro USM

Canon 5D MKII

teneral

new

emerged

Focus Stacked

Zerene Stacker

Female

♀ « less

Sets appears in: • Dragonflies 2013

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