Picture Of The Day - "Dragonflies by the Dozens"

The last many weeks have been very challenging ones. I finally got my hard drive straightened out. With all the back and forth and transferring folder by folder and/or file by file, I got all of my images back. I am truly grateful that out of 215gb, I did not lose one single file! Thank God!

Then, this past weekend began another test for me. Apparently some sort of virus found its way into my computer. Did all that I was comfortable doing to fix the problem, but after two days battling with it gave it over to Norton. After about three hours (and a decent little monetary exchange), they were able to remotely clean out all traces of the infection. I'll have to say that I have been blessed. This has been my primary computer for about three years, and this was the first time I have been "invaded" by a virus like this. I've heard nightmare stories from others who didn't fare so well.

So, hopefully, now that all the computer issues are resolved, I'll be able to get back to paying attention to my blog and get back to the Picture of the Day. I haven't been out shooting very much for the last several weeks, so my new material was running a little dry. But I was able to go to the Hillsborough State Park and another local County park one day. Also made another trip last week to one of my very favorite local parks called Eureka Springs Park here in Tampa. They were closed for renovations for several months, so I was excited to be able to go back and see all the new growth since my last visit. I'll be putting some of those up through the next few weeks.

But to get back into the swing of things, I will start with an image I took while on a walk around the property where I live. This property abuts a natural mangrove swamp preserve next to the Bay. Although not very smart (because it was a gazillion degrees outside!), I took my walk around 3 p.m. Once I got out on the boardwalk, I started noticing dragonflies everywhere. They were zipping in and out on all the bushes and landing on the water. Some of the growth was covered with them like butterflies cover freshly blooming trees. I got really excited shooting them. Although I couldn't get as close as I would have liked to, my Nikon 70-300 lens did a pretty decent job. The other problem was that they were so active, it was hard to get focused on them before they were moving again. It was a lot of fun, though. Here's just a sample of what was out there. This is a Carolina Saddlebags - Tramea carolina.