Yesterday evening a feeding swarm of dragonflies (large darners) formed in our yard. This is a regular late summer happening. Usually I simply watch in awe when this happens as there is no way to capture this spectacle with still photography.
There were literally hundreds of five or six inch dragonflies flying about, seemingly at random, preying on insects too small for me to see. (Hopefully some were the mosquitoes that eventually found me while I was making these videos!)
Remembering that my little Nikon 1 V1 could do video (including slow motion), I set the camera up on a tripod and experimented with video.
This unedited clip is in real time:
Here is an unedited clip in slow motion (5 seconds of real time):
One more edited clip in slow motion (about 2.5 seconds of real time):
None of the dragonflies are in focus… I am not sure how one could get them in focus as they are moving very fast and randomly. I hope that one gets a sense of this interesting behavior anyway. However, it is no substitute for seeing it live.
I think that I will stick to photography in the main!