Flight of the Wandering Glider 02

Description:

Wandering Gliders are very strong fliers and seldom land. The hindwing is distinctly wider at the base than that of most dragonflies. They sometimes form large feeding and migratory swarms. They eat small flying insects, especially gnats and mosquitoes.It is one of the few dragonflies in my area that I had not been able to photograph... until today. I went to the pond and they started swarming around me. I knew they would not land so I would have to photograph them in-flight.My lens would not focus fast enough to get a good shot so I switched to manual focus and managed to get two shots that were fairly well focused.I wanted the fastest possible shutter speed. I set ISO to 400 and used the widest aperture I could for the focal length I was shooting. A focal length of 200mm and aperture of f5.6 gave me a shutter speed of 1/4000s on this shot. (The background was a grassy area).Photographed on 07/30/08 at the pond in Bob Jones Park, Tarrant Co. TX.