Banded Demoiselle Damselflies

One of my local wildlife sites is particularly reliable for Banded Demoiselle damselflies, surely one of the most attractive of all British dragonflies and damselflies. Earlier in the summer I spent several early mornings there hoping to find them while it was still cool and while they were still co-operative. I didn't always succeed, particularly with the females which seemed to be more scarce than the males, but did come away with one or two shots that I was quite pleased with. I have others to come that I've yet to process.

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Firstly, here's a male;

I was keen to get an image showing their wing markings more effectively which requires them to be photographed from above. This is a challenge as the aerial view tends to mean that grass etc on the ground clutters up the background while the wings are rarely held flat and so pose a real challenge for depth of field. The answer is to focus stack - to take several frames with different parts of the image in focus and with the background taken using a large aperture (which reduces depth of field). These can then be merged in Photoshop. The image below was taken in this manner;

Finally, an image of a female: