Marion Dobbs – Ode photographer Extraordinaire
Marion has always been attracted to biology, natural history, and the outdoors. She doesn’t know why – neither of her parents were, nor any other relatives of their or her generation. But she has soldiered on alone.
Her education and training included an undergraduate degree in zoology, a master’s degree in conservation ecology, and a doctorate in biogeography. If she could have made a career as a professional student, she would have. She tried.
Marion actually worked for pay for several years and took even more years off to raise two children. Midlife crisis, combined with empty-nest syndrome, sent her back to school followed by another period of employment. Now she spends much of her time wandering in fields, slogging through swamps, wading in rivers, and digging in streams in search of her study target – dragonflies. When she’s not out doing that, she’s home bending over a hot computer maintaining a variety of state databases, keeping up with her field notes and email, editing photos, doing a bit of reviewing for Odonata Central, making maps, and designing websites for herself and for the occasional other.
Kelp Goose — Marion is also a great bird photographer!
She has been extremely fortunate to explore many parts of our country on foot and by car and to travel on all continents excepting Antarctica, primarily on bird, natural history, and/or photography-oriented trips. She is proud to state that she has seen House Sparrow on all of those continents.
Marion’s writings and photographs appear in a number of esoteric journals, books, and field guides read only by the select few and on various insect identification and conservation websites popular chiefly with geeks of her own sort.
She has five grandchildren, none of whom, to date, show more than a passing interest in nature. She is thankful for the digital age; it enables her to maintain contact with those who do share her unending curiosity about the world she lives in.
See more of Marion’s great photography on her blogs:
Dragonflies and Damselflies (Odonata) of Georgia, the southeastern U.S., and beyond
MAMOMI – Travels, Nature, and Oddments of Various Kinds
