Powdered Dancers mating

I suspect that naturalists and nature chroniclers are basically pornographers at heart, since much of what we do involves a shameless documentation of all manner of mating behaviors. So it was that I was at streamside, balancing precariously on whatever rocks I could find—I should have brought my waders—on my last couple of hours in the light before picking up my Lyme Disease fighting antibiotic prescription that had finally arrived at the pharmacy. I'll have to be really careful of sun exposure during the course of treatment, but I'm already sun sensitive so, during the middle of the day, I tend to keep to the shadows anyway. These coupled Powdered Dancer damselflies, a common species at the millpond below-the-falls stream, have been showing off their amazing mating postures for several weeks, but for reasons I can't determine, my camera has been hard-pressed to determine a proper exposure on its own. I did a lot of experimenting today, and I finally came up with the right settings to expose the male, in front, holding the female in place with the end of his abdomen, so that she can receive, from his thorax, a packet of sperm that she has harvested with the end of her abdomen. He looks so nonchalant, wearing an expression that would never do in the human depiction of this mating position, which, thankfully, is not anatomically possible in our species.