Earth Explorations

f /2.8 1/1000 71.9mm ISO100 Dragonfly Super zoomed in view. You can see the "smile" My photo safari for September was a traipse around Mickelson Pond. Naturally, being a pond, there are things like dragonflies about.  I am slowly continuing my camera studies learning its features in drips and drops. In this photo I used my manual focus. I know it would be a better photo if the dragonfly were facing the other way so you could see its head more clearly especially as I think when you zoom in, the dragonfly looks like it is smiling. But dragonflies don't take direction well— Could you face the other way, darling? There's a shadow on your features— or really at all so you take the photo you have which is not always the one you want. If you are lucky they sometimes turn out to be the same thing which is a lot like life in general. iNaturalist is telling me this is probably a variegated meadowhawk. I wonder if they all have slightly smiley faces?

While reading the Lost City of Z by David Grann  (note: I haven't seen the movie yet) I came across this quote from an unnamed member of the Royal Geographical Society. Explorers are not, perhaps, the most promising people with whom to build a society 1 . Indeed, some might say that explorers become explorers precisely because they have a streak of unsociability and need to remove themselves at regular intervals as far as possible from their fellow men. I understand this. I may or may not have a streak of unsociability. But I do like to get away every now and then to wander around and look at things. The extremes and privations that Percy Fawcett (historical protagonist of The Lost City of Z ) and his kind suffered appeal to me not at all. But I know that itch to get away from the most comfortable of creature comforts just to see what's there. Seeing what lies in the lesser trammeled parts of the world is my major motivation behind my jaunts, mostly to the Badlands. But I