Spent the morning at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens with the lotus and water lilies. This was one of the last shots as I was leaving in mid-morning. The sun and warm temps bring the dragonflies out. This one is a bit the worse for wear. Surprising that it could fly with those tattered wings.
The secret to photographing dragonflies and butterflies is to watch where they are landing. Usually, they will keep returning to the same spot. Find that spot and set up your camera / tripod and focus on it. Then it's a simple matter of waiting for the return and shooting, and waiting and shooting, ... I put the tripod low so that I could use the blue sky as a background and get the critter & blossom to "pop".
Used my 75-300 zoom with a 1.4x teleconverter - a lens that I don't use too much any more since I don't do much stalking of critters where the 630 mm (35 mm equivalent) is needed.