Common Whitetail

This is one one those images that did not look that promising from the thumbnail (the image looked busy in the thumbnail), but turned out to be really good. The larger image is even better. I like the soft color tones throughout the image, and, of course, the excellent wing detail. Excellent overall, John.

That's a beautiful shot of a female widow skimmer. Those yellow abdominal stripes are quite distinctive on females and newly-emerged males of this species. I posted a shot of the male of this species last week, here. You can see that the wings are somewhat similar in both sexes, with that distinctive pair of "saddle-bags" close to the body on the hind wings.

I have some shots of common whitetails, so I'll post one of the male so you can see what they look like. You probably see them all the time. The wings of the male have a very broad central dark stripe, and the females -- which don't have the white tail -- have three distinct dark stripes on each wing.

Excellent detail makes the dragonfly really stand out against the bg. A beautiful capture.

ADDENDUM: Just noticed you thought the widow skimmer was a FEMALE common whitetail. I don't have a good shot of one, but here are a couple of terrible shots (action shots ovipositing, shot in very dim light) that do show the broken yellow abdominal stripe and the three wing stripes.

Great details on this dragonfly which still looks great even with your large crop! Love the neutral colors in the nicely blurred background. I think I would have cloned out the brown area in the upper left corner. Nice capture, John!

Excellent image. Super sharp with great BG. It appears to be a clone smudge at the rear end of the body.

Looks great, fantastic detail in that shot. I like the perch very much, as well as the blue-green hues of the background. The foreground OOF piece of plant intruding into the frame is a bit of a pity, but the shot still works very well for me. The light is a wee bit on the harsh side, but still works for me here.

Hi John A beautiful capture, stunning wing detail, and love the light and overall color of this image
Albert Darmo