01 Nov 2014 FILM DIARY

Today something utterly wonderful happened. I was on my walk in Driscoll Lane when a beautiful turquoise and gold dragonfly whizzed by and entered a hedge a short distance in front of me. Much to my delight I discovered it resting on a twig in full view. I opened up my PANCAM, took several photos and a 30sec video of the dragonfly, unconvinced that they amounted to anything regardless of the fact that the sun was  interfering with my view of the monitor. I continued on my walk and bought a couple of items at the post office, determined to return with my Sony on the off chance, in order to do the subject justice. In less than 15 minutes I was back and to my immense relief the dragonfly was where I had left it. I filmed 30 seconds of hand-held footage purely to get the dragonfly on tape before resorting to my tripod. In all, I changed the camera position five times, shooting many minutes of tape. I didn’t check the time of my return, but I would have been filming for between 20 minutes and half an hour, possibly longer. I was setting up my last shot when the dragonfly departed as precipitately as it had arrived, apparently disturbed by two small birds which by then were close by in the hedge.