The Golden Hour

Having looked last night at the forecast for today, it looked likely that there would be a good sunrise and with little or no wind and a good chance of dew, I was tempted to get up early for some sunrise shots. I was up early this morning where at 4.45am I was pulling up at Nethergong. As I got out of the car, there was absolutely no wind at all and the horizon line was clear of any cloud which all looked promising. I made my way up to the eastern end of the site where with a bit of time on my hands, I looked for some appropriately resting damselflies. I found a few Emerald Damselfly after a search and one in particular was on a nice piece of grass which I chose as this mornings subject. I set up the tripod and took a few tester shots to see what they might look like and sat back for a while and waited for sunrise. Anyone who knows me well knows that I love being out early before everyone is out and about, the sights and sounds of the countryside waking up are pure heaven. As sunrise approached, I could see the sky starting to colour up and so began taking a number of photos.

Emerald Damselfly at Sunrise

The sunrise happens quite quickly and there is only a small window of opportunity to capture the shots I wanted before the sun rises too high and the electric colours are lost. Changing the angle of the sun in the background provides a different feel and look to the shots and using my knowledge learnt so far doing this, I was able to take another set of pleasing images.

Emerald Damselfly at Sunrise

With the sun still low enough for some gorgeous lighting, I took the opportunity to photograph the Emerald Damselfly with the sun behind me which turned out quite nicely.

Emerald Damselfly (male)

Within about 15 minutes, its all over with the sunrise and off to check the grasses where I found c20 Emerald Damselfly and a little later, a check of the trees produced 36 Willow Emerald Damselfly. I get the impression the Willow Emerald Damselflies are slowly moving out through the site and hopefully I can monitor their numbers still and get that mating pair shot that I challenged myself to get. Weather permitting, I should be back out again in the next few days and keeping the camera in action!