Since the weather was just perfect—warm, but low humidity—this should have been a good day for picture taking. But I had spent most of yesterday on photography, so I instead opted to assuage my building guilt by working on a house project: building a stone wall. This kept me busy through the daylight hours, but after supper, while it was still solid twilight, I walked down to the millpond to see what was going on. A Great Blue Heron commanded the shallows about 100 feet from me, but, in the gathering dimness, the bird was out of camera range. At the base of the millpond dam, however, and definitely close enough to capture as an image, some dusk-loving dragonfly worked the shadows. I should have brought my net, I whined to no one in particular, but it was home and the only tool I had to snag the critter was my camera and flash. I turned off the autofocus, which wouldn't work fast enough under crepuscular conditions, manually focused on a single likely spot, and waited. When the odonate flew to the right place, I shot. I missed way more times than I got anything of interest. This image, not National Geographic quality by any means, worked well enough to ID the ode: clearly my twilight-loving friend, the Fawn Darner. I should have known.

Fawn darner 2