Dunyeats Heath

Dunyeats Heath Nature Reserve, in Poole Dorset was Saturdays Macro Destination.  I took along my new Manfrotto Befree Tripod to try out, along with just the Canon 100mm macro lens in the hope of finding some dragonflies resting to take and try the tripod out.

The place was buzzing with flying dragonflies – the reserve is a heathland with large pond.  Finding them roosting to take was not going well until another photographer kindly said he’d found a couple of resting dragonflies – and would I like to see and take some film of them.

Here are the two dragonflies that he pointed out – a Migrant Hawker and Golden Ringed – both taken in Natural light and on the tripod.  All bar the last are stacked images.  I did this to keep the background blurred by shooting at a wide aperture – and then when they are merged together the whole of the dragonfly is in focus.

Whilst photographing these dragonflies – a strange bug crawled out over a bramble leaf near the Golden-ringed.  I took these shots of it – and it also appears in the video below.  As yet I have not identified it.

Finally as well as this – I found a Labyrinth Spider that I took a couple of stacks of.  I think it also looks quite well in black & white, so one of the stacks is converted to mono.

As I had a tripod – I also took some video footage of the subjects.  The resulting video is below

Map of Location