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Color Cast Removal, when there is a mismatch between the Kelvin temperature of the light falling on the scene and what the camera can capture, a bluish cast often occurs. Color Cast Removal is just one way to deal with this if you need to deal with this. I prefer using NX2 for this, here’s how I do it.
Wildlife Photographers Base Camp is very excited to announce a very special Texas Bird Base Camp in June, 2010. We’re going to where this photograph of a Crested Caracara was taken, on the border in Texas. This very special event is like no other Base Camp we’ve offered before. For full details, head here. Or, if you’re up to the challenge you’ll call and grab one of the six openings now!
[swf]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/DBTES0022.swf, 396, 600 [/swf]
The deadline is nearing, entries are coming in. Where’s yours?
MooseNewsBlog has a little photo contest we want to run. The subject is nesting birds, deadline is 30 June, 2009. The rules are pretty darn simple.
The submission rules are simple as well. Those submissions that don’t adhere to them will be automatically deleted, no notification of deletion will be made.
All gallery of all the entries is going to be created. And remember, we have a prize for the winner. Nikon Sport Optics is awarding a great pair of bins, the Monarch 8×42 ATB.
Looking forward to seeing all the images!
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 2, May, 2001
“It’s an INVASION!!!” he exclaimed. I’d just gotten off the plane, Pro Trekker on my back, Eagle Creek Monster Trunk in one hand and Lowepro Madison 1100 computer case balanced atop the Lowepro Pro Roller 2 in the other hand as my good friend Arthur Morris greeted me with overwhelming excitement. We had met in Nome, Alaska to photograph birds in June of 2000, venturing there primarily for the fabulous shorebirds in breeding plumage. The last thing either one of us expected or planned on was an invasion!
Artie went on to say, “there are 14 Northern Hawk Owls here; they haven’t been here in nearly 80 years!” Now I’ve seen hawk owls for years in Alaska and for one reason or another, every time I had an opportunity to take their photo something would happen so I would end up getting skunked. Artie’s news didn’t excite me much, knowing my previous track record with hawk owls and when I relayed this to Artie he replied, “folks are seeing them everywhere, point blank range!” I knew better than to go by what “folks” had been seeing (been down that road before) and since Artie hadn’t seen them yet I paid the invasion no never mind. That was at least until the next morning, our first drive on the tundra of Nome.
Driving out of town on the Iditarod route into Nome, we headed towards one of the small “villages.” We traveled through the village and went all the way to the bend in the road, reaching the “train to nowhere” about 22 miles out. We were both scanning both sides of the road the entire time, looking for any birds to photograph and much to our great disappointment, saw darn few. So few we never got out of the car to even set up our cameras, once! A few words crossed both of our minds as we realized that either we were way too early or the birds were late in arriving. We’ve been there, done that before with tundra nesters in Churchill; we know the drill all too well!
We turned around and headed back down the same road we had just driven, our eyes still peeled for anything bird like, anything! Then, there sitting atop a pole was a small silhouette, perched with its back to us, backlit. We went forward until we could identify the bird, it was a Northern Hawk Owl! Well, we proceeded to get our gear out and set up when Artie said, “it’s flown off.”
That was my typical experience with the hawk owl, so I put my gear back into the car and proceeded down the road. We were coming into the village that we had passed through earlier when we saw another hawk owl off to our left and just a few feet above the ground. This time my bad luck was going to end, as the drought was over and it was about to pour! I would finally have a photograph (or a couple thousand) of the illusive Northern Hawk Owl.
Nome was my “transition” shoot when I finally decided at the end of two weeks that I would no longer shoot conventional film. This came about from shooting for two weeks, switching back and forth between the F5 and the D1. That’s the way it was when I suited up to do battle this first time with the Northern Hawk Owl. With the D1 on the 600f4 AFS with TC-20e attached, I figured I had all the horsepower I could muster to get a nice image (that’s 1800mm of horsepower!). In my vest pockets were the TC-14e and F5, 20+ rolls of Agfa RSX 100 II and Lexar Media CompactFlash cards. I was ready to rock and roll!
In total sync, Artie and I worked our way the hundred yards from the back of the vehicle around the owl to photograph it frontlit. The world around us was quiet; you could hear a lens cap drop for miles. And you could see for mile after mile after mile on the Nome tundra, being as flat as a board and just as bare. In this setting we approached the owl as stealthily as 600mm armed photographers can. The ground all around us was covered with last year’s dead grasses that crunched with each step, emitting such noise that I’m sure could be heard all the way back to Nome. Despite all of this, the owl stayed put, “teed” up to photographic perfection.
Slowly, ever so painfully slow, we walked around to get into position to shoot. We set down our tripods for the first frames, some distance away still from the owl. I put my eye up to the viewfinder, expecting at any moment for the owl to fly. I was finally looking through the viewfinder and focusing on a Northern Hawk Owl and just as the lens snapped into focus, the owl flew! Since I shoot with both eyes open, I saw the owl had flown a very short distance to our right, actually giving us a better background. Now if we could just get the owl in the viewfinder again!
We picked up our cameras and slowly, ever so slowly again moved towards the owl. The distance wasn’t more than 20-30 yards when we set down our tripods and captured the first frames of Northern Hawk Owl. The jinx was broken! Over the next fifteen minutes, Artie and I moved in closer, perfected our angles for the best background and started to bang away flashcard after flashcard, roll after roll.
We had worked our way up to the owl so we no longer were using the 2x but rather the 1.4x. Just then, the owl flew off again, this time going some ways up the beach. Once again, we picked up our gear and followed. Again the owl let us approach and we started ripping off the film again and filling up the flashcards. (Switching between the F5 & D1 got old fast!) In fact, it occurred to both of us that photographing this owl was getting down right easy! There had to be a reason for our being able to approach the owl so closely now, shooting with just the straight 600mm, right out in the open.
The mood and behavior of the owl seemed to have changed since it landed on this newest perch. The “lazy” attitude it had as if it were just shaking off a hangover was replaced with the alertness of a guard dog on duty. The owl’s head was turning left and right, upside down, every which way as it peered down into the grasses all around us. I had been so wrapped up in just getting close and capturing this cool little dude on film, I hadn’t taken time to look at the grasses we were walking through on the sandy beach.
I stopped and started to look at the grasses in the direction the owl was studying so closely. I didn’t see a thing but I did hear, ever so faintly, rustling in the grasses once in a while. I just assumed that it was a slight breeze causing the noise. We were kneeling on the ground, photographing the owl, as the perches were pieces of driftwood, no more than knee high. All of a sudden, something ran up my pant leg for a brief moment. It really startled me, but I never saw what it was. The hunt was on for me to find out what was in the grass.
I stared and stared until finally I saw a dash of brown fur right in front of us. I kept watching when I suddenly saw another brown fur blur, then another! We were in the midst of a vole explosion and the owl knew it (probably why the owls were in Nome in force). The change in the owl’s attitude came from the fact that it was on the hunt. This little piece of basic biology is what permitted us to get so close to this small owl, the Northern Hawk Owl, which is the size of a phone receiver.
In a very short time the owl really started to get into the swing of things, flying very short hops from perch to perch in the attempt to find the best vantage point to grab a vole. Each time the owl moved, we moved with it and the images we began capturing were beyond our wildest imaginations. Finally, the owl made a very short flight, ending with a complete 180-degree turn in the air to come down on a vole. With the vole in its talons, the owl flew across the road, perching on a long driftwood log.
We started to walk toward the owl, stopping at the vehicle long enough to download all of our shot film and reload with fresh. We had probably gone through 30 rolls in those 30 minutes. We approached the owl not knowing how it would react to our approaching it when it had food in hand. Slowly we came up on it, the owl not making any sign it had any intentions of leaving. We stopped about 45 feet away and set up to shoot. It was perched beautifully on the lichen covered root end of the driftwood log. There it just sat, not doing a thing.
So we just sat, watching the owl do nothing. You’d think that it would start eating but rather it just sat. Watching it through the lens, I started to see small body movements in the chest and throat. After watching it for a while, I realized what was going on. Since we rehab small owls, I had watched them many times prior to the process of casting a pellet. This is what the hawk owl was doing, getting ready to cast a pellet and until it had done so, it wasn’t going to eat the vole it had just caught.
Well, even with this advance knowledge of the event forth coming, when it actually did happen it was so fast and so lacking of any drama, we didn’t capture it on film. But we did get all the blood and guts glory of that cute little brown vole being shredded! You should have heard the motordrives rip as we shot the action of the brains being picked out and eaten, head severed and eaten and then all the entrails being pulled out of the body cavity (gee, sure hope you’re not eating while you’re reading this). This was killer stuff and considering it was the first time I had gotten to focus on a Northern Hawk Owl, I was in pig heaven!
At this point in the dismembering process the owl stopped, hopped down behind its root perch and cached the remains of the vole. We would discover by following the owl for the rest of the morning that it had a half dozen cached vole remains in various perches in the area. No sooner than the vole was safely cached the owl flew off to perch near where it had caught the vole.
We went over to see what the owl was doing as it had on “it’s time to sleep” look. (Just as well because between the light getting a little hard and totally running out of film until we went back to the hotel, we were done shooting.) Through our viewfinders we could see the eyes of the owl close slowly until it nodded off. We were perhaps thirty feet away at the time, the owl not giving a hoot we were present. (You know I’ve been dying to use that word in this piece.) With that, we joyously packed up our gear and headed down the road.
I repeated the above scenario with most likely the exact same owl for the next four mornings! You just can’t imagine how many images of Northern Hawk Owl I have in my files. It got so silly, just how close we could get to the owl and move about, that I could take all sorts of before and after images for this or that educational purpose. I could do depth-of-field and exposure studies as well as tests with different lens/teleconverter combos and distances. In all honesty, there were times when I wondered if the darn thing was alive!
The rest of the time I spent in Nome, I kept looking for other birds to photograph and to be honest with you, it was slim pickings, I was simply too early or the birds were late for the nesting season. It wasn’t until the last days of the trip that shorebirds started to show up. There were plenty of other things to photograph like Moose, grizzly and Musk Ox, but I was skunked for my main objective, shorebirds. But that’s OK; it gives me a great excuse to go to Nome again, as if I really need one!
Have I photographed a Northern Hawk Owl since? Nope! Have I had the opportunity to? More than I want to think about but each time for one reason or another, I’ve never captured another frame of the Northern Hawk Owl since Nome. Since I have about 4000+ frames between digital and conventional of Northern Hawk Owl, it’s not like I have any shortage of Northern Hawk Owl images. But you know, that cute little devil is in my blood now. Every time I see one, I can guarantee you that I will grab a camera and attempt to capture the image. No matter how successful I am though, it won’t ever be the same as the invasion of 2000!
(Note: It was from my experience, photographing the Northern Hawk Owl in Nome, June 2000 with both the F5 and D1 that convinced me to shoot with just the D1. With all those images to compare side by side and to see how the cameras work in the same conditions and situations, it was obvious to me that the D1 worked so much better for my style of shooting, solving problems so I could be a better communicator.)
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Vol. 7, Issue 4, August 2002
The sun hints of its arrival in the east with a soft glow of color. The air is quiet and damp with the night air still clinging to the surrounding landscape. From the brightening sky, the pond in the distance becomes apparent as we stroll in that direction. Dark shapes can be seen in the pond like mere puffs on a stick, standing in mass on one edge of the pond. The light slowly brings definition to the shapes and we can see it’s a small flock of Least Sandpipers. They’ve spent the night in the water, a natural intruder alarm sounding should a predator try to make an approach during the night. And now the light is just right for photographing this sleepy little flock. They begin to stir as a wave of wing-stretches spread amongst the flock. It’s the beginning of a perfect morning of photographing winter shorebirds.
Surprisingly, many wildlife photographers do not haunt shorebird territory in the winter. Maybe that’s because they don’t like the winter plumage of winter shorebirds. Perhaps it’s because many species are so small, getting a “big” image size is beyond their optical means. It could even be that photographers are simply not aware of what great subjects they make. I’ve been into winter shorebirds long before I was even a photographer. I’m so into shorebirds that I’ve traveled to many regions in the far north to photograph them on their nesting grounds. These little puff balls are really addictive! I’m going to try to entice you to get down into the mud and have some fun with me, photographing winter shorebirds.
The avian group known as shorebirds is really large. It comprises sandpipers, plovers, stilts, avocets, snipes, oystercatchers, turnstones and phalaropes (phew!). All these groups include the 49 common species of shorebirds found in North America (not included are the rarities that show up on our shores from time to time). In the winter when we see shorebirds, we find them in their drab, gray plumage. Breeding in the northern latitudes, these mighty long-distance travelers winter in many locales throughout the US . Just after arriving on our shores, they molt their spring colors for their grays, blacks and browns we’re accustomed to seeing. While many don’t even recognize them when they are all decked out in their spring wear when they’re heading north, they’re a familiar friend in winter.
While not something most photographers think of when photographing shorebirds, their bills are incredibly diverse. Some are long, some short, others broad while others are very thin. In addition to all the bill variations are varied leg lengths. Added to this is the fact that some shorebirds barely tip the scale at a couple of ounces while some weigh in over a pound. This incredible variety of characteristics permits shorebirds to successfully forage nearly side by side and not be in real competition with each other. This includes wet soils just as much as dry soil types.
Just what do they find to eat when they stick their bills in the slimy mud? Plovers have large eyes and locate their food visually by foraging for insects from the surface. Sandpipers have poorer eyesight generally finding food by touch, probing the mud with their bills. Shorebird diets consist of polychaete and oligochaete worms (sounds appetizing to me), insect larva, and aquatic insects such as water boatmen. Other food items include amphipods, copepods, crustaceans, and mollusks. What they forage for depends upon their bill and leg length.
How do all of these shorebird varieties find their way to and from our shores? That’s a really cool process I think. One summer when I was shooting in Churchill , Canada with my good friend Artie, we saw this great mystery unfold before our eyes. We were there to see the Hudsonian Godwits raise their young and watch those young take off on their migration prior to the adults leaving. What was cool was we knew the young would actually meet up with their parents again on the east coast in a month or so. How do “chicks” that are only a few months old, know when, how and where to fly with no one showing them? It is truly amazing!
The routes shorebirds use to migrate are pretty well known. There are four major flyways, so no matter where you live in the US , you should be able to photograph winter shorebirds. (World wide, I couldn’t find an answer as to how many flyways exist, but there’s plenty for everyone to photograph!) Shorebirds are believed to have an internal compass (powered by what is a good guess) that gets them from point A to point B. This compass might be influenced by the sun, moon, position of the stars, polarized light, magnetism, wind, photoperiod, olfactory cues or any combination there of. However they amazingly do it, the vast majority ending up at inland wetlands to spend the winter.
It’s hard for me to understand why I don’t see more photographers out on the mud flats with me when there are literally millions of subjects just waiting to be photographed. The shorebird numbers are just staggering, especially when you consider we can’t exactly count each and every one of them. When you look at the estimates though, it can take your breath away. Recent USFWS censuses of several staging areas in recent years showed the following numbers for these species: At Delaware Bay- 600,000 shorebirds consisting mostly of Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones, and Semipalmated Sandpipers; San Francisco Bay, California- 930,000 shorebirds of multiple species; Great Salt Lake, Utah- 600,000 Wilson’s Phalaropes and 300,000 Red-necked Phalaropes; Bay of Fundy, Canada- 1,000,000 shorebirds with Semipalmated Sandpipers numbering in the 100,000’s. At sites in South America 500,000 Wilson’s Phalaropes and 20,000 Golden Plovers were counted in Mar Chiquita Cordoba, Argentina, 1,000,000 Semipalmated Sandpipers were recorded at Bigi Pan, Suriname, 2,000,000 Semipalmated Sandpipers and 50,000 Short-billed Dowitchers at Wia Wia, Suriname, and 750,000 Semipalmated Sandpipers, and 50,000 Lesser Yellowlegs at Coppename Rivermouth, Suriname. Wow!
Why do shorebirds tend to mass in such numbers? Safety in numbers is surely a big reason for the large flocks. If you’ve ever watched a Peregrine Falcon on a hunting foray, you’ve seen how the masses protect those in the middle of the flock when they take to the air while tail end Charlie usually is the one that gets picked off. With the ever decreasing loss of habitat, one can’t help but believe that that too is creating greater and greater concentrations. When you add this all up though, there is no getting away from the fact that shorebirds are just waiting for us to take their photograph!
Long lenses, old clothes and knee boots are a really great place to start! Photographing shorebirds does require long lenses, the longer the better. Photographing shorebirds is not a poor man sport I’m sorry to say. When I say long lens, I’m talking about a 600mm with either a 1.4x or 2x. I know my good friend Artie often stacks a 1.4 & 2x on his 600mm (a definite Canon advantage) to get a whopping 1680mm (good thing he has IS, probably the one time when it really makes a big difference!) Attach this rig onto a 1D and you would have a 2180mm lens! Zow!!! With Nikon we can combine a 600mm and 2xs for 1200mm and on a D1 family camera end up with 1800mm. You don’t need this much horsepower, but it sure does make life easier.
The shortest lens IMHO you can get away with is 600mm. This could be a 400f5.6 with a 1.4x, 100-400IS on a 1D or a straight 600mm. A very popular combo is a 500mm and 1.4x because it is light yet powerful. You can easily see for yourself how much lens you need by simply focusing on someone’s fist. The basic adult fist is the size of your basic peep (small shorebird). You can see just how close you have to get with the lens you have to get the image size you desire. It’s the combination of focal length and physical distance from the subject that determines your image size.
Digital has been a great boon for shorebird photography for many reasons. One is the great focal length digital brings to wildlife photography. I’ve talked about this many times in the BTJ. With cameras like the D100 or a used D1 on the market, you can get to 600mm or greater for less than $2k which in many instances is less than the price of a telephoto lens.
The one thing you cannot scrimp on is the tripod! You’re always working on very unstable ground which is true if you’re standing up or lying on the ground. You need maximum stability from your tripod no matter how you’re set up. The vast majority of the time, you’ll be shooting at slower shutter speeds than normal (because of DoF) and if you cheap out on tripods, you’ll never get a sharp image.
I can’t emphasize this enough! When you set your tripod up, you must push the front leg of the tripod down into the muck! Resting your tripod on the top of mud or sand is not stable. The surface tension of these soils can often hold the distributed weight of your rig but at the same time, it transmits all vibrations to the tripod. By simply pushing the front leg of the tripod into the mud or sand, you break this surface tension. This gives you a solid platform in which to operate. (Be sure after shooting in the muck that you clean your tripod legs before you close them up. This prevents the muck from getting up into the inner sections of your legs and joints and causing you problems later on.)
Footwear is really important to shorebird photography. I’ve seen many a great image missed because it meant venturing out in the mud, a place photographers couldn’t go because of their shoes. Shorebirds are out in the mud and the muck as we’ve seen for safety and food. If you want to get close, you’ve got to go out to where they are! This means getting muddy. The best option is simple knee high boots. Simply drive to where you’re going to shoot and then put on the boots. When you’re done shooting change out of the muddy boots before driving home and you’ll have an easy time of dealing with the mud.
When it comes to clothes, you can wear anything you’d like, but if you wear something you don’t care about then your clothes won’t hold you back. Getting down and dirty is a big part of the fun of shooting shorebirds. Just like your shoes, if you wear clothes you don’t want to get dirty, you’re going to miss out on a possible great image.
A very common question I get in regards to photographing shorebirds is, “do you need a blind?” I’ve never used one for photographing winter shorebirds and in fact, never used one for photographing nesting shorebirds either. There is no doubt that you could use a blind and it would help you get closer. My only problem with them is the fact you’re often working with tides. The tides would have to be perfect along with the light and location of the shorebirds for a blind to be a benefit. But sitting in a blind in mud is not my idea of fun!
The first thing I recommend is you go out and find where it is the shorebirds hang in your area. Grab your binoculars, call the local birding hotline, go out with a local Audubon group, do whatever it takes to find those shorebirds! You don’t have to live on the coast to photograph shorebirds, as you can find them nearly everywhere in North American in the winter (though some regions might only have one or two species). You’re looking for photographic locales and not just birding locales as the two are not always conducive. You’re going to want to be picky about the locales you locate for a very specific reason. Once you’ve found the shorebirds, you need to think through your photographic approach.
I personally like to photograph shorebirds first thing in the morning. This is partially because of the quality of light, but it’s more because I like to find the shorebirds when they’re still sleeping. So when you’re locating your shorebirds and thinking through how you’re going to get close to them, you might keep in mind shooting in the early am as an option. You’re going to need to scope out a means of walking to your shorebirds without waking them. While this might sound simple enough, when it comes to shorebirds and mud, it can be anything but simple (ever heard the noise a boot squishing into mud makes?).
At a couple of my favorite places to photograph shorebirds in California the path is solid muck. Knee high boots are the only way to go. Two other locales I frequent are all blacktop. But whatever the case may be, there is one thing we must always keep in mind when approaching shorebirds. Habitat Ethics! Many of the shorebirds that become our subjects are endangered. The vast majority of the time they are endangered because of habitat loss or degradation. The last thing we should do is add to this problem by our activities! All it takes is common sense and you’ll have no problems.
Once you find your shorebird subjects and you figure out your best approach, you can figure out your equipment. For example, when I go to shoot at Palo Alto Baylands , CA to the morning pond, I have a 2x connected to the 600mm. When I go to my favorite pond in Bakersfield , CA , all I need is 600mm. Why is preselecting your optics important? Two reasons, both technical.
When shooting at first light, there is very little light so shutter speeds are critical. This is especially true if you’re cranking down the DoF. Quite often when shooting a group of shorebirds, I’m at f/22. At this aperture and shooting at ISO 200, my shutter speed is down in the 1/20 range. All of this is important because you need to be able to operate in all of these conditions and come back with sharp images!
This means you need a secure place to set up your tripod. Prescouting a locale can help assure this. It also means you need to use proper long lens technique. Shooting at 1200mm at 1/20, if you don’t use proper long lens technique, you won’t come back with sharp images. A lot of your photographic success then comes from the homework you do prior to ever firing the shutter! (Obviously at these slow shutter speeds, if the subject is moving, you’re going to have images out of focus no matter what you do. This is the other main reason I go early in the morning when the shorebirds are still asleep.)
You’ve done all of your homework and you’re now standing in front of a flock of shorebirds, what next? The first thing I try to capture while the light is low and the birds are still motionless, are reflections. I go after the reflections first because once the birds start to move about while waking up, the reflections are usually gone for the rest of the morning (besides shooting at a slow shutter speed with moving subjects doesn’t work).
The other reason I go after reflections first is the light. The lower the light is on the horizon, the more even the exposure between the subject and its reflection will be. I personally prefer the subject and its reflection be even in exposure rather than the reflection being underexposed compared to the subject. Using a split graduated neutral density filter just isn’t an option. Being a very careful observer of light is. Another big benefit of shooting early in the morning especially on the coast can be fog/overcast. This very natural diffusion can extend the great light required for reflections. When photographing shorebirds that are mostly tan or gray, you can squeeze by with marginal light, but that’s not the case for any bird with white plumage. American Avocets, Black-necked Stilts, Greater/Lesser Yellowlegs can all present real reflection problems once the light level starts to increase.
Successful reflection shots require more than just a mere reflection. The subject itself is the key. The subject and its pose must be so perfect that you want to see it twice. You need to know a little bit about your subject. One thing to look at more than anything else is the feather condition of your subject. While that sounds a little weird, if you’re a good student of bird photographs, you’ll note all the birds’ plumage is in perfect condition. If you have a perfect bird, you’ll have it twice when you capture the reflection correctly, making your photograph twice as good. If not, then the imperfection is doubled making your photograph twice as bad.
Looking for behavior that you can reflect is a great thing to look for. The most obvious behavior is sleeping, the bill tucked into the wing. But when the shorebirds first start to stir they often preen a little. This can be a great shot. You need to watch the action at hand and your shutter speed, but capturing this behavior makes for a really cool image.
Before the shorebirds start to stir and while you’re working the reflections, you want to photograph the masses. Photographing flocks of shorebirds all resting on a pond is spectacular! It requires lots of DoF to make it all work which means your shutter speeds are in the basement. There are no tricks or magic numbers for success. You need great long lens technique, a good eye for patterns and the means to crank off lots of images. I highly recommend you take a minimum of four of each shot. This is because generally the 2 nd or 3 rd shot in a series is going to be the sharpest. If you take a number of images to increase your odds, then you’ve gotten the image. Take it from painful experience, there is nothing worst than having a great pattern and great reflection only to not have it sharp!
Patterns are another great morning shooting activity. Short, tall, black, white, long bill or short bill, sleeping or waking, you name it and you can find it in the shorebird flock. Some patterns are so plainly obvious you can’t help but see them and focus right in on them. Others are very subtle and don’t show themselves until you exclude everything around them. I personally will pan the entire flock first horizontally and then vertically and with various focal lengths to find these more hidden pattern treasures. Pan slowly as you view through the viewfinder, look at the subjects, their reflections and all that’s going on. You’ll be surprised at all you’ll find that you didn’t see with your naked eyes!
Something else to be on the look out for before the sun comes up are the flying ballets. I become so mesmerized by watching flocks of Western Sandpipers or Sanderlings or Least Sandpipers or Short-billed Dowitchers fly in unison in their aerial ballets. They rise and fall, turn left then right, speed up and slow down all in sync with the bird next to them in a ballet that could never be choreographed to better perfection. This is where the beauty of the Wimberley Head really becomes apparent as you track this swirling mass of beating wings, dancing through the air. Tracking, focusing, firing is all a matter of luck in capturing the perfect form in the final image. The key is simply shooting a lot and picking the best flock pattern back at the virtual light table. But capturing this ballet in the red light of early morning or late evening is a special treat for the winter shorebird photographer!
As the morning progresses, so do the shorebirds. Depending on the species the first activities are determined but in general, most shorebirds start the day with a bath. While the actual bathing can’t be photographed because of the slow shutter speeds we’re shooting at, it’s what happens afterwards that you want to be prepared for – the wing stretch. Shorebirds often wake with a wing stretch and while I’ve captured them after sunrise, I’ve never yet captured the wing stretch reflected. It is an image I strive to capture. The name of the game is being prepared with the knowledge it could happen. This means not having too much lens because you don’t want to crop out the wing because you’re too tight. It means being horizontal or vertical when you should be. Some species stretch their wings straight up more than sideways. If you’re horizontal when an avocet (one of my favorite shorebirds) stretches its wings, you’ll miss it because they like to stretch their wings overhead.
The little peeps tend to go right to feeding. Photographing feeding activity early in the morning requires you to make a judgment call. Do you go for freezing the sewing machine feeding activity or do you go for DoF. There is really no easy way to do both because of light level and shutter speed. The feeding of peeps, often likened to a sewing machine because of the very rapid up and down motion of their probing bill, is really hard to freeze. The key is using peak of action, that is, shooting right when the shorebird is at the top of the stroke or at the bottom and stops just for a heartbeat before proceeding in the opposite direction. Motordrives and the willingness to use them is the key here along with a good eye and fast finger.
There really is no limit to the activities and the photographic possibilities as the morning moves on. Shorebirds fly in and out a lot, train on that. Some shorebirds start to get territorial and chase other shorebirds about, concentrate on that. If you’re tuned into a birding hotline, you might look for that “rarity” that all the birders are trying to find. While not a ticker anymore, I do like to know if a rarity is in the area so I can keep an eye open for spotting it. I sometimes will decide to go to one pond over another because a rare shorebird had been spotted there. The shot of the Pectoral Sandpiper is a good example of looking for a rarity once the gorgeous morning light has evaporated.
A great place to head to photograph winter shorebirds once the light gets hard is the beach. The natural reflective quality of the sand helps fill in shadows so while the light is harsh, the actual light range is minimal. There is a technique I use here more than I do in the marsh. That’s getting down! I know of some photographers who love to crawl in the mud to get this angle, but that’s just not my idea of fun. But doing it in sand is not only fun but kind of essential I think! While the sand works wonders for filling in shadows at hard light times, all that white isn’t the nicest of backgrounds. You can see what I’m talking about in the photo of the Wilson ‘s Plover. The shot on the left was taken with the camera on top of the tripod, shooting down. For the photo on the right, the tripod foot of the 600mm was literally resting in the sand (be sure to take a towel with your to clean off the sand before returning your lens to the tripod).
Getting down is a personal option (I’ll leave that to your imagination). In the case of the Wilson ‘s Plover, I like both images. The one on the left is the classic pose while the one on the right is so intimate. The key here is to realize this is an option and if you’ve never gotten down, try it at least once and see if you like the results.
The water’s edge is a great place to head as well. Here you can find all sorts of shorebirds going about the routine of surviving. Surely you’ve seen the Sanderlings’ seemingly tireless efforts to push the ocean back. How about a Marbled Godwit or Willet chasing the waves out to find an unprotected sand dab? Maybe it was a pond shoreline with a Black-bellied Plover foraging amongst the shells. Perhaps it might be a Black Turnstone on the rocks with the waves crashing behind it. The photographic possibilities are endless!
Photographing winter shorebirds is an endless pursuit! I could write and write and write about it and spend even more time actually doing it. These little “drab” birds on more than one occasion have saved my sanity when no other subject could be found to photograph. While this piece is all about photographing winter shorebirds, don’t think this is the only time I photograph shorebirds. Traveling north to see them all dressed in their summer finest is a lifetime thrill for me I keep seeking. But those trips are to far off lands that last only a couple of weeks. Winter shorebirds are subjects you can find right where you live and can enjoy for months at a time. Use the information here as a stepping stone to your own adventures with this very diverse and fun group of birds. The winter shorebirds, may they take the chill out of your winter!
Reprinted from the BT Journal, Issue 3, August 2002
While sitting at the breakfast nook at my aunts when I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old, I noticed this miniature nest just outside the window. As I ate my cereal, this tiniest of birds would buzz into the nest, feeding an even smaller mouth, gaping wide open. And then in a heartbeat the little bird would buzz away. I sat enthralled that morning while watching this small miracle of life! Later that same day as I played in the garden, I saw a flash of red that is still burned into my memory as it darted from flower to flower and then away, being chased by another flash of red. My love affair with hummingbirds goes back much further than my love affair with photography. But as you’ll see, these two passions most certainly did merge together!
Hummingbirds are a New World species so you will only find them in the Americas. There are approximately 18 species of hummingbirds in the US (depending on how you count them) with really only one dependable species “east” of the Mississippi and all the rest in the “west”. (Of course, these are birds with wings so they can show up wherever they choose!) They range as far north as Anchorage, Alaska and as far south as you might want to travel. They are a challenge that most Journal readers can enjoy!
“I’ve never photographed so difficult a subject before!” “How can something so small move so fast and be so hard to focus on?” “Even with all the images I threw away, I’ve never felt so satisfied before than with the images that turned out!” These are just a few of the comments from participants from my recent Arizona Bird Safari where we spent a lot of time, photographing hummingbirds. It’s a perfect example where, even when shooting with the newest of technologies, you must rely on good old basics to capture the image! Photographing hummingbirds to me means either photographing them at the nest or when they are feeding. Because of their biology/life style, there really is no middle ground. Let me share with you my love and fascination with what are properly called, the Jewels of the bird world!
Faster than the Shutter!
One of the “fun” things about photographing hummers is seeing all the blank images you manage to capture. You can literally fire off roll after roll of images only to capture empty space. If you’re shooting conventional, this stings because it’s money lost, but not so with digital. The point is that these little jewels fly so fast that you can literally focus on them, depress the shutter and when you view the image, they’re gone; you’ve captured nothing! This is truly the main problem we have in photographing hummingbirds, stopping them!
I’m sure if you’re like most you’ve looked at the photos before reading this piece. If so you should have a sense of how I prefer to photograph hummingbirds. I personally like to let their wings blur in my photos because that’s exactly how I see them, in action, a blur. I don’t like hummer shots where the wings are frozen in time. Capable of beating up to 70-75 beats per SECOND, I think it’s an injustice to the very essence of the hummingbird to freeze its wings. The techniques I’m going to describe pertain to not freezing the wing beats, but rather letting them blur so as to capture on film what it is to be a hummingbird.
Getting Them in Front of the Lens
This has got to be the biggest challenge, getting these little fellows to hold still in front of your lens! When attempting to photograph hummers, most photographers head out to the garden where they see them feeding and then try to ambush them. Following hummers about in a garden is real unproductive because they move not just because you move, but because other hummers chase them. While this is not the most productive of methods it’s on the right path!
I don’t know of any way of photographing hummers without the use of feeders. Where flower blossoms are the ultimate method, any given flower blossom has an average life of a week or less. That’s not very dependable for our purposes especially since part of that time the blossom is less than photogenic! Feeders are 24/7, 365 day food sources that hummers and you can depend on. This means that you need to start this whole process by hanging some feeders. (Please note the plural here in feeders!)
The first thing you need to determine is whether where you live (or where you want to photograph hummers) even has hummingbirds. There are many ways of doing this from contacting local Audubon chapters, bird feeding stores and the web just to mention a few. There are very few regions in North America that don’t have hummers at some time of the year. Some folks are very fortunate and have hummers all year round. Where we live, we have them for a very short 3-4 month period during the summer. In some regions you need to be sure to pull in your feeders so the hummers will migrate in the winter whereas in other regions you can leave them out all year.
Once you know about the general time the hummers are in your area, you need to get the feeders and have them out. Since filling feeders is a weekly matter, I look for feeders that are easy to clean and extremely well made. My current preference is the BEST-1 Feeders. (We have the 32oz models even though we only put in two cups of sugar water at a time.) These feeders are real easy to clean and fill, which makes the chore just that much more pleasant to do. You fill the feeder with plain old sugar water at a ratio of 4 to 1, 4 parts water to 1 part sugar. You don’t need any food coloring, as this has been shown to cause little growths to occur on the hummers’ bills, which can be fatal. With a filled feeder in hand, next you need to put it out.
This believe it or not is kind of tricky. There are a few criteria you need to consider when putting out your feeder. First is a place that will attract the hummers. This must include places for the hummers to perch nearby and keep an eye on the feeder as well as feel safe. Keep in mind that the more feeders you have out, the more hummers you’ll have. As a general rule, each feeder will typically have one male that dominates and defends the feeder. This male will often change but there tends to be just the one, pain in the butt that tries to drive off all the other hummers! While this is the theory, it doesn’t work all that well.
When you have more than one feeder, you’ll have more than one dominant male. In our case, we have 3 feeders, two relatively close to each other and the third at an opposite corner of the house. These three feeders have 3 dominant males that are constantly trying to fend away another dozen male and female hummers. We have a total of about 15 hummers and while the dominant male is off chasing one hummer, two others will come in to feed. That’s why I say that more feeders are better. It brings in more hummers, which naturally increases your odds of getting the shot!
The other consideration for placement of the feeder is photographic. There are two main photo ops we’re working towards, flight shots and feeding shots. Both of these require that we consider the backgrounds of our photographs. You will more than likely move your feeders more than once in your effort of finding the best locale to hang it. What you’re going to need to do is watch the feeder to determine the hummers’ flight path and activity levels. These will vary by time of year and time of day. With this variance is added different light on the background, which is why you’ll probably move your feeders about.
You’re looking for a background that is dim to dark as well as green. You don’t want a pitch black background but it needs to be dark enough to make the subject pop while not lowering your shutter speed below 1/60 (I’ll explain why momentarily). A very common background is a potted plant that you can move into place when you’re shooting. In many situations this can be the easiest solution. If you have the space, then finding shadows that naturally occur at the time of day when you’ll most likely be shooting is desired.
One trap many photographers fall into is setting up feeders with busy backgrounds. Since we’re shooting in the backyard, which is full of shrubs, plants and forbs, brown branches, twigs and leaves abound. It’s so easy to not “see” these photo killers until you get the images back on the light table (either real or virtual). You must force yourself to see the background, all the bad as well as good to be successful. This must include plants with drops on them from the sprinklers, which create specular highlights. These bright spots caused by the water drops in the background can kill a great photo. These little details plus a hundred others are what you must run through your mind’s eye when you place your feeder.
The last thing to keep in mind in this hanging process is what our photographic goal happens to be. We’re not working towards photographing the hummers at the feeder, but rather when they’re coming into the feeder to feed or to a flower we place near the feeder. The feeder serves just as a way of getting the hummers to one place the vast majority of the time on a regular basis.
(One side note: At one of my feeders, which is quite a distance from any type of perch, I literally attached a perch to the side of the office. This is where the dominant male can perch and watch “his” feeder. This just makes the hummers come more often to the feeder in a predictable manner so I can photograph them.)
Hummingbird photography is probably the one and only time I would tell photographers they need patience. You need to have patience in waiting for your feeder to become busy. You need at least two if not three hummers using your feeder to really be productive. You can shoot with just one hummer, but you’ll have a lot of down time between feedings, which can get real old and hard in fleeting light. You also need to be patient with yourself and your photography. No matter how proficient you might think you are technically or photographically, you will find like the participants on my AZ bird safari that hummingbirds are the hardest subjects to photograph.
Hummingbird Flight Photography
Ah. this is when the fun begins! I guess we should start with lens selection. The biggest variable here that you need to get a handle on for yourself is working distance. Working distance affects both your image size and flash output.
Lens Working Distance
When it comes to image size, each of us will have a personal preference on just how large we want the hummer to be in the frame. A good rule of thumb requires you to use your thumb. Your thumb is the average size of a hummer so by focusing on someone’s thumb (unless you have really long arms), you can predetermine how physically close you need to be to the hummer to get the image size you desire. If you have problems getting the image size you want, you have a couple of options.
The first option is a totally different lens. I personally have two options I prefer, depending on the feeder location, the 600f4AFS w/TC-14e 1.4x or 300f4AFS. Both of these lenses offer me the angle of view as well as the minimum focusing distance I like for my style of shooting. You could also think of them in this way. I use the 300f4AFS in situations where the hummer and I have some sort of rapport so getting close physically and shooting is not a problem. The 600f4/1.4 combo is for those situations where I don’t have that rapport with the hummers. It could also be because I have a dominant male who is driving us all nuts and preventing hummers from coming in with ease. You might have noticed both of these lenses are AFS and assumed that fast autofocus is a critical part of hummingbird photography. As I’ll explain momentarily, we turn the AF off and fast manual focus is essential to photographing hummers. While AFS lenses are not required, they do help in being able to focus close.
The next option for image size is using a teleconverter. There is a plus and a minus to using teleconverters for image size. The plus in my book is the increase in image size with either the 1.4x or 2x. The other plus is the limiting factor it has on DoF (BTJ Vol.V, Issue 2). The minus side is the light loss and when shooting with flash, it can be a biggie! Of course, if you’re shooting conventional and you want to increase image size, you can always switch to digital, which will get you a 1.5x larger image size with no light loss : )
The last option is getting closer and using extension tubes. Extension tubes change the optical formula by increasing the lens’ air gap and therefore permitting you to get physically closer to your subject and focus on it. An example of this is the 600f4AFS focuses down to nearly 20 feet and with 18mm extension it focuses down to nearly 18 feet. Those two feet can make a world of difference and since you experience no light loss with extension tubes, they have no adverse affect on the flash’s output. The other option is to buy the AFSII or newer Canon IS lenses, which focus closer right out of the box.
Flash Working Distance
The very basic elements of flash exposure is, flash to subject distance. The closer the flash is to a subject, the more “powerful” its output is for our needs. For example, with the SB-80DX shooting at ISO 200, at 10 feet you’re at f and at 20 feet you’re at f/. This is a dramatic difference! It’s important you keep in mind even though I haven’t talked about it yet, we’re using our basic flashes for this style of hummingbird photography and not some giant bank of 600 w units. The combination of the flashes’ physical distance from the subject as well as the f/stop in use determines the “speed” of the flash. The proper term is Flash Duration, this being the duration of time the flash is actually lit. This range can be anywhere from 1/2000 to 1/22000sec! This is the reason we depend upon flash and not ambient light exposure for hummingbird photography. The speed of the flash blows away the speed of our cameras to stop the motion we’re working on stopping.
The vast majority of the time we’re using two or more flash units, which some think increases the light output and therefore the total power of the flashes. It doesn’t work quite that way, as we’re not using multiple flash units for more power, but more coverage as I’ll explain in a moment. Right now my favorite flash combination is two SB-80DX units. Instead of going into how to make the settings on the flash work here, refer to What’s Up with Multiple Flash in this issue.
Equipment Setup
The biggest obstacle in equipment setup is the flash, so I’m going to start there. I typically like shooting with a minimum of two flash units (which is a challenge with digital). One flash is the main and the others are slaves. The main flash is the one that is attached either directly or by a cord to the camera’s hot shoe. The slaves are the flashes, which are not connected to the camera’s hot shoe. It’s the positioning of the flashes that we need to talk about.
The positioning of the main flash for me is pretty much carved in stone. I always set the main directly over the lens. The reason for this is I want the shadow created by the main flash to always fall behind the subject and not be seen. If you draw a line from the flash to the subject and then continue that line beyond the subject, you’ll understand why the positioning of the main flash is so important. This main flash is also our main light, in a sense replacing the sun. It’s what is actually lighting the subject, bringing light to our subject.
The second flash has only one real job for me and that’s to light up the throat or gorget of the hummer. This is where I tend to lose folks because we start taking about physics. To light up the bright colors of the gorget we work with a principle that’s an everyday staple of commercial photography: Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. What this means is, in order for the film to see the gorget, the light must be positioned so the angle of the flash to the subject equals the angle from the subject to the film plane. This is not a simple matter!
The positioning of our second flash is determined by this angle. Its position is dictated by where our subject happens to be, which is determined by where we have set up our feeders. In order to get to the point where you can set up your flash you have to have everything else in place plus one more thing. Positioning the second flash so you can light up the gorget, you have to know where your subject is going to be, which means you need to watch the flight path your subject uses to come into the feeder.
A technique you can use to help make the light spread out more and help light the gorget is to use a xxx. This miniature light box spreads out the light. In a perfect world, you’d have two “second” flash units with light boxes side by side. This creates a huge light surface to light up the gorget.
Can you be successful with just one flash and no light box? You bet, but you just have to be really smart in the placement of that second flash. The key is the position of the flash in relation to the subject to the lens. This can be enhanced or hindered by the positioning of the lens. Your equipment setup then is really all based on my favorite element of photography, light.
My personal favorite way of shooting hummers is with the 300f4AFS, D1H and 2 SB-80DX flashes. The 300f4 is my favorite lens because I can focus so close with it. Its minimum focusing distance of five feet in conjunction with its focal length is an incredible tool. Even better is if I need a larger subject size in the frame, I can add a TC14e 1.4x and easily continue shooting.
I do use the 600f4AFS w/TC-14e 1.4x at times but this is not my preferred tool. The working distance between the flash and subject is too great, which means my flash duration is shorter so the flash’s ability to freeze the subject is less (plus increased recycle time).
The D1H is my favorite simply because of its five+ frames per second.
The SB-80DX is not my favorite but it’s the best available at the moment. You’ll need to read, What’s up with Flash in this issue to understand better how to take advantage of this tool.
One thing I should mention as being important is the tripod head. You need to have a stable platform to shoot from as well as the ability to pan with the hummers. I personally like the Gitzo 1377.
Photographing hummingbirds is the most challenging wildlife photography around. After accomplishing all of the above, your final challenge comes when you’re behind the lens! The first thing that must be done is the assemblage of the gear at the feeder.
The first thing I recommend folks do is set up the lens to photograph the hummer. You set up to either photograph them as they fly to the feeder to feed or the flowers to feed. What’s the difference? The biggest difference is the background and focus point.
The background for the flight shots, those shots taken of the hummer coming to the feeder, is more predictable because you know where the hummer will be when you take the photo. With this knowledge, you can set up accordingly to have the best possible background. The background if at all possible should be some shade of green, light to dark. If one is not easily attainable then I recommend you bring in a potted shrub and place that in the background. Don’t forget light, that’s a very important aspect of the background selection as well!
You’re probably asking yourself, “How do we know which side of the feeder the hummer will come to in order to control the background?” You’ll know this because you’re going to place small pieces of tape over a couple of the feeder holes so the hummers must come to just the holes you want them to. Tricky hey?! Of course, you don’t want to overdue the tape and you want to be selective which holes get covered. But in this way you can predetermine where the hummers fly into and control the background.
What about the flowers? Where and how do they come in? My preferred method of photographing hummers at flowers is simply by placing hummingbird plants right next to the feeder. You can go on the internet or check with your local nursery about which native flowering plants work best to feed hummers in your area. Some of you might have picked up on the word native. I personally like photographing hummers at native plants only. It’s really very simple to do and the final results are quite spectacular. Controlling the background when photographing plants can be accomplished to some degree. (We’re not using flower blossoms cut from the plant, but those growing and still attached to the plant.)
One way to attract hummers to particular blossoms and therefore, controlling the background, requires a little sugar water. With an eyedropper, you very carefully place a couple drops of sugar water into the blossoms of those you want to photograph the hummer. You have to put the sugar water in very delicately and realize that it will kill the blossom. A blossom with sugar water in it will last normally 5-6 hours at best, after which time it starts to droop and look sad. While this provides limited control on the position of the hummer it does give you some, which is better than none.
With knowledge of where the hummer is going to fly in, you can place your secondary flashes. You’re going to place them with the intent of strictly lighting the gorget. To accomplish this you need to set the flashes off to the side, either right or left of the lens and main flash. You decide which side based on where the hummer is flying in (and there may be an equipment restriction as well). The key is to place the flash so it’s lighting up the gorget. This is easier to accomplish for the flight shots than the feeding shots at the flowers. This is because the hummers going to the flowers will almost never use the same flight path twice so predicting where they will fly to light it is a challenge.
You have two options for positioning the secondary flashes, the Wimberley Macro Arm (featured in BTJ Vol. VII, Issue 2) or the Bogen Magic Arm. These units can easily and quickly position a flash. The Wimberley actually attaches right to the lens, which is really slick because it permits you to move the lens to follow the subject while always having the flashes in the same constant position you desire. The Magic Arm doesn’t have this same flexibility but you will find that with certain feeder setups and time, you can make it work perfectly for your needs.
The next thing you need to decide before actually firing off the shutter is the DoF you desire and require. In this process, you also need to take shutter speed and flash speed into consideration.
What is the appropriate DoF for a hummingbird? My own personal preference is f/8 which at 5+ feet provides enough DoF for focus from mid way on the bill to just past the back of the head (focusing on the eye of course). This aperture also reduces the amount of flash output required for an exposure, which makes the flashes fire and recycle faster (compared to f/11 or f/16). The best way for you to determine what is best for you is to simply photograph your thumb. I would measure back from the tip one inch, draw a black dot (to represent the eye), focus on it and shoot.
In this process you must keep a constant eye on your shutter speed! One real problem we need to be concerned with is ghosting. Ghosting is caused when photographing a moving subject at too slow a shutter speed with flash. What occurs is that during a slow exposure, the flash first fires, freezing the subject and then in the subsequent exposure time while the shutter is still open, an ambient light exposure occurs where the subject moves. You freeze the movement of the hummer and at the same time it moves during the rest of the exposure, creating a “ghost” of itself. We want this for the wing beat but not for the rest of the hummer’s body.
What can you do to prevent ghosting? I highly recommend that until you get really into hummer photography you stay away from shutter speeds below 1/250. Once you get the hang of it and the movement of the hummers I recommend not going slower than 1/60. Now these are just suggestions because you’ll notice in one of the images accompanying this piece, the shutter speed was 1/30. In that image, you’ll notice the wings are incredibly blurred, which is what I was after.
The last really big “trick” to making hummer images work comes to focusing. This is one sport where manual focusing is the only way to succeed! To successfully photograph hummers, you must manually focus but to increase your odds, you need to prefocus. Prefocusing means you focus on a point, some point, so the lens is already focused at the approximate distance you expect to find the subject. In this case, I personally recommend focusing on the back side of the feeder. Hummers tend to approach the feeder from the back (from the camera’s point of view) and then once at the feeder, decide which “flower” to feed from. (Keep in mind that some of the “flowers” have tape on them.)
What about the real flowers you have around the feeder? Where do you focus? This is not as easy to predetermine a focus point since you can’t tape off any of the blossoms. You should know which ones you put the sugar water into so I recommend you prefocus on those. The problem is the hummers can fly into and hover about the plant in any direction without any real predictability. This is the problem, the challenge that I enjoy.
After all of this, you’re down to just actually taking the photo. I have some thoughts here for you, but they are personal elements to the photo I think about. The first and foremost is composition, which I think of as horizontal and vertical elements. The vast majority of the time, I photograph hummers while shooting vertically. This is because I like to take the action of feeding and make is a diagonal in the frame. This brings action to the still subject, fills the frame to the max while providing enough room to capture the full wing beat. This means I’m as close to the hummers as I can be.
I shoot horizontals when I want more room to make up for not knowing exactly where the hummers are going to stop. Composition when shooting horizontals is a little more difficult because you have more space not being used by the hummers in the frame that you must use with other elements that support the story in the photo while not detracting from the hummer. When shooting hummers in plants, this is easier because you can rely on the blossoms to take up space otherwise not filled by the hummer.
Whether you’re shooting horizontals or verticals, one thing you must look out for are stray branches. Stray branches are the little dead twigs in plants that show up in the worst places at the worst times in your photograph. These typically tan twigs are incredibly distracting to the eye because of their color and linear lines. Many folks don’t see these distracting elements because they are so small, but when compared to the size of a hummer, they are gigantic. This also goes for dead leaves and blossoms. These must be gardened out carefully, using scissors to remove them rather than just trying to break them off.
You’ll find that focusing on a flying hummer is a major challenge once you’ve gotten through all the rest of this. Their constant movement, jabbing in and out of a blossom, moving to avoid harassing male hummers, finding new blossoms to feed from, all will challenge your focusing ability. It’s KEY that you do not get frustrated with your results, as it takes time to get the great images! This is very difficult wildlife photography despite the fact so many aspects of it are seemingly so controlled. Just the focusing can get to you as images come out, out of focus. You then mix in the flash and making it work to light up the gorget. And we can’t forget just the process of getting the hummers in front of the lens in the first place.
Photographing nesting hummers is a little easier than photographing hummers at feeders. With nesting hummers, you always know where to find them for that brief period. Some would rather not photograph nesting hummers as it’s the drab female that’s at the nest. The males mate with as many females as they can find and then have nothing to do with nesting duties. Even so, I find photographing nesting hummers quite enjoyable.
Finding a hummingbird nest is no easy task. The nest of a hummer is not much bigger than a fifty cent piece in diameter and perhaps an inch tall. Constructed of plant down and spider webs (so the nest can expand with the growing chicks and still hold its shape), they naturally blend in with their surroundings. Hummingbirds are kind of funny when it comes to approachability. With some, you can’t get within miles of the nest before they dart off while others you can literally pet their backs. You want to avoid the first kind and find lots of the second!
Photographing a nesting hummer is much like photographing any nesting bird. There are a couple of things though I want to point out that make photographing nesting hummers unique.
Placement of the flash is important because some females despite what the books say have gorgets. While not full blown blazes of color like their male counterparts, the female gorget is still worth lighting. You can use the exact same concept for nest lighting as for feeder lighting just keeping in mind the safety of the nest in the process.
Photographing hummer nests requires a real vigilance on the shutter speed. Since nests are typically in shadowy places, slow shutter speeds are the norm. This can bring on ghosting so you’ll find yourself constantly forsaking DoF to prevent ghosting.
Lastly, patience! Hummers tend to want you to be very still when they are flying into the nest. I always feel they’re playing some sort of game with me by making me hold perfectly still and if I don’t, they won’t come in right away. When I mean hold still, I’m talking feet, toes, hands, head, everything! And don’t be surprised if they buzz you or the AF illuminators on your flash! This is common so expect it so you don’t make some gesture that scares off the hummers. With these few things, you are set to have the time of your life as you witness the incredible transformation of a hatchling hummer. They go from looking like bugs to gorgeous adults in a matter of weeks!
Photographing hummers is the most rewarding wildlife photography you’ll ever experience, once you capture that great image! Getting to that point is not a quick process. Like all great things in life, time and effort pay off in the big rewards and nothing is truer than in photographing hummers. To get to that reward, you need to start now and constantly work on this challenge in order to make it all come together in that great image. Once you get started and the images start appearing on your light table, you’ll find yourself incredibly happy as you hum along!
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