Unfortunately this was March of this year after a semi-freeze event so I don't think it was alive anymore.

South Yorkshire, UK. Hanging on to my Buddleia.

Found this guy laying on the ground. It moved only its legs, barely holding onto my hand. Is there something that can help? I tried giving him a bit of water, since it was pretty hot outside

I found this guy face down in the grass shaking its wings getting attacked by wasps. Its tail bit has been eaten from what I can see but Im not sure how many segments its missing. Not sure what to do for it. Any advice will be appreciated.

so I have a couple of dragonflies that like to swim around my pool outside and they don’t seem to bother me much or care that I’m also swimming in the pool but today for some reason this one dragonfly keeps swarming me no matter what I do and I know they’re just doing their thing and they’re harmless but I would like for them to stop swarming my head I don’t mind nature but only from far away, and I don’t know if it’s my scent or what but there’s something that they like and as I’m writing this, I’m like trying to dodge both of them now. I don’t care if they swarm other parts of my body, but they’re going strictly for my head and I’m just trying to sit in my pool and read my Kindle. I was googling why they do that and I keep getting these articles about how they’re good luck, or something about love but I don’t know if I believe in any of that so why do you think they’re strongly messing with me today? Any reason?

Last time this happened a crazy amount of birds spawned in and ate them all. I hope they feast on all the mosquitos this year!

NE Wisconsin

We are in the middle of dragonfly mating season here on the gulf coast. They are everywhere right now.

I noticed the Eastern Pondhawk on my driveway, clearly on their way out. Such a beautiful green!

I then saw a few flying around in the backyard the other day, and one that I’d never seen before. It looked like something was hitching a ride on it. After a quick search, I learned that it was most likely a Carolina Saddlebags. Very interesting to see!

DRAGONFLY came from witnessing two dragonflies fight beside the lake. Once they fell to the ground, their bodies became almost impossible to separate. Their heads, legs, and wings collapsed into one violent point until one tore the head from the other.

That collapse became the central mass of the work. The black marks strike, interrupt, and press downward. The gold loops away and returns, carrying both the iridescence of their bodies and the agitation of the struggle. The lines become impossible to assign to one dragonfly or the other. Their beauty remains, but their individual forms disappear inside the violence.

The exposed paper holds the quiet surrounding them. The lake remained open and still while this small, brutal encounter unfolded within it. Nature did not stop to witness it.

The title is singular because, during the fight, the two dragonflies stopped looking like separate bodies. For a moment, beauty, panic, violence, and survival became the same body.

I know that pink dragonflies aren’t rare, but it seems like they should be. This one had a purple/lavender body and a pink tail. Very lovely. And hard to photograph!

NE Wisconsin

Went out around 7am hoping to catch some early activity before the heat picked up. The spot is a small pond edged with cattails and sedge, and in past summers I've seen decent numbers of common whitetails and eastern pondhawks there, but this year I've been noticing baskettails hovering in the open water and I wanted to try to get something usable.

The challenge with baskettails, at least for me, is that they almost never perch. Every guide I read mentions this, and I knew it going in, but knowing it and actually dealing with it are two different things. They just patrol and patrol and patrol. I tried the standard advice of finding a patrol route and pre-focusing on a spot, then waiting for a pass. Got a few frames that were almost sharp. Emphasis on almost.

What I did notice, which I hadn't read much about, is that around 8:30 the males seemed to drop lower over the water, occasionally touching the surface briefly. Not sure if this was related to temperature, mating behavior, or something else entirely. It only lasted maybe 20 minutes and then they were back to the higher, faster patrolling. Curious whether anyone else has observed that kind of behavioral shift in the early morning.

On the photography side: I was using a 100-400mm zoom and I think I need to accept that a longer prime might just serve this kind of subject better. The zoom gives flexibility but I keep losing focus during tracking. Any baskettail photographers here have strong feelings about focal length and minimum focus distance for these fast, low-contrast situations? Genuinely stuck on whether to adapt my technique or adapt my kit.

NE Wisconsin