consworld

Here’s how I capture hummingbirds sipping nectar with mountains and sky in the background making bands of blurred color:

Put the pot of flowers on the deck rail where there is a distant view of mountains. (This will work with other distant views or objects as well. Try to find a pleasing background  with nothing between the flowers and the background.)

Use a telephoto and experiment with aperture settings until your flowers are sharp and background blurred.

A tripod helps to support a heavy lens while waiting to photograph.

To capture the hovering wings, use a fast shutter speed.

Optional: Add a little fill flash to lighten shadows or light up the iridescent feathers of the bird. 

hummingbirds

A male rufous speeds back and forth from his guard post on an aspen branch to the feeder to defend against all incoming sippers.  

Being the dominate rufous at my house would not be so difficult, but feeders on every side of the house make defending from a single branch impossible. 

Watching all the feeders throughout the day, I see sippers I might think were being denied if I watched only watch one feeder. Broadtails are still about, but rufous attempts to rule.

Capturing perfectly sharp stills of hovering hummingbirds’ wings was a bit of an obsession for me in the 2005 – 2006 hummingbird seasons here in Consworld.  Now, as I continue to experiment with both natural light and flash hummingbird photography, I’m favoring the blurred wing images over the sharper ones.

Even with the bill shadow cast on the bird by the midday sun, I like this photo, but might remove the shadow before printing.

hummingbirds

Middle of July brings the rufous hummingbird, already migrating south. Rufous only visits my area on the southbound migration. The northbound route is much farther west.

This yearly visit changes the behavior of the broadtails who have been feeding and nesting here
since late April. As the rufous charge in and seize control of July flowers and feeders,
the broatails must sneak to the feeders and flowers for a quick sip before a guarding rufous
chases them away.

Smaller and faster than the broadtails, rufous are expert flyers and very agressive. It is hard to get  hovering photos of either species at my place right now with all the quick sipping and high speed fleeing and pursuing going on around here.

However, I confess I haven’t put much effort into photographing the hummingbirds and my normal nature subjects for a few weeks.

A wonderful week long visit with family has kept me busy photographing people rather than birds and other nature subjects. I also spent a few hours this month photographing a wedding party as an assistant to a professional portrait and wedding photographer/friend and neighbor.

Dark afternoons have promised and sometimes delivered welcome rains this month. After the rains, I like to photograph summer wildflowers. But, I’ve been digging and pulling alien weeds after the rains (it’s easier then) and doing wildfire mitigation (cleaning up deadfall and dry plant material) around my home this month. 

Now, I’ve made a promise to myself to spend more time in the coming weeks on my nature photography work and less time with people and house chores. A moose was sighted in an area close to my home recently. I’d love to photograph her if she’s still around. 

Happy July!

Con

P.S. Another project on the table now is an Artist Co-op in a nearby town. This is something I’ve
wanted to do with area artists about for about three years. An opportunity is on the horizon, so we are meeting and researching. I’ll write more about this when (and if)  we get to the planning stage.
 

hummingbirds

I’m still sorting through all the photos I captured in June and now it’s July already. Here are some June captures I found in the files dumped hurriedly onto the computer during the past few weeks.

another tongue:

sipping current nectar:

baby nuthatch:

sparrow? what kind?    Female redwing! Thanks, Drew!

western tanager:

red fox “tippy” at sunset:

Birds, fox, hummingbirds

Hummingbird’s tongue.

Two festivals a week apart have kept me busy. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Rhubarb Festival and Bailey Days this year.  It was a beautiful two days by the river in Bailey last weekend and one day fest at the firehouse the week before in Pine Grove.

It’s wildfire season. A wildfire is buring in an older burn area near Pine Valley. Lighting strikes start fires. The wind blows. Virga in the sky more than rain drops on the ground.

Pine pollen. It’s a green world with green windows and people driving green cars – even the gas guzzlers are “green” right now.

Too much talking (at the shows), too much pollen (everywhere!), my voice is dry like the weather.

We get a few raindrops splattering in the green dust some afternoons.

The western tanagers are here. We usually have a pair near our house this time of year. The male is so brightly colored it is possible to spot him immediately in the douglass firs. He is cautious and won’t come too close. He is seen most often with his mate somewhere near. She is yellow green and blends with new growth on the trees. I feel sorry for the male, too bright to hide.  

Columbines are blooming, yellow, blue, and purple.  Lots of other wildflowers blooming now, too. Wild geranium, penstemons, cinquefoils, blanket flowers, sedums, wild roses . . . too many to name them all.

Summer is here. I missed posting photographs of its arrival while busy with the shows. Soon, I’ll begin catching up by sorting through this month’s photographs to see if I have enough for a June “review” post. For now, I’m out photographing what’s left of June in consworld.  

Birds, hummingbirds, shows

June in Consworld means hummingbirds feeding on the wild current bushes near my home.  It also means printing and framing for my display at the annual Rhubarb Festival in mid June at the fire house in Pine Grove. I’ve been working on my display when it is too windy to photograph. The images above were captured a few days ago.

Yesterday I waxed the tent for Saturday’s show and tested the set up in a variable but mostly light wind. I’ll have help setting up on Saturday morning, but ran through the whole set up from canopy with weights attached through display walls and print bins. I always get everything out and test it before the first show of the season.

I didn’t hang anything on the display yesterday during my tent and display wall test. The plan for hanging is still evolving in my head as I frame and count and group images with options I’ve scribbled on scrap paper. More frames should arrive today and when I’ve finished the framing I’ll print all the new labels and information cards.

As I print, frame, sort, and pack, I long to be outside photographing. When I’m outside photographing I forget about all the things I have to do to be prepared for Saturday’s festival for a few minutes and enjoy the light and colors of June.

hummingbirds

 
This male broadtail hummingbird spread his wings several times before flying away. He was probably showing another hummingbird he was prepared to defend his territory.

 The birds often perch on a dead twig where they have an almost 360 degree view to watch over the wildflowers and feeders. The males seem to spend more time chasing rivals away than they do feeding on the flowers they so jealously guard.

Though the images could have been cropped more for this post, I wanted to include a few of the spring-green aspen leaves in the images above.

Below is a both a closer crop of the bird and the full image:

The bird is a very small part of the full image at the distance (perhaps 40 feet) I was working with the 100 to 400 telephoto fully extended to 400mm. Taking a photo of something the size of my thumb from that distance is ok when I’m just cropping for web images, but there just aren’t enough pixels in the bird to make a big print. I usually photograph when the birds are closer.

Windy weather has limited my outdoor flash work recently. (See previous post.) The flash extender acts as a sail in the wind. More to come on lighting up the hummingbirds when I have more to show and write.

hummingbirds

When capturing hummingbird images, my habit has been to work morning or evenings on bright sunny days to get enough sunlight on the birds for the shutter speeds I wanted. For a large part of the day, the sun was too high to light the undersides and the wings and beak cast even deeper shadows on their bodies. The best time for me to work on hummingbird images in natural light was between 8 and 9 a.m. on a cloudless day.

The birds didn’t always cooperate much during my prime time, but I was able to get some nice images and I was happy. The bright feathers on the neck or gorget of the males would reflect the brilliant color in my image if the bird was at the right angle. With my back to the sun I hoped the bird would be turned just enough toward the sun to get the reflection of bright color coming my way.

I’d read about others who photograph hummingbirds using one or more flashes to light the shadows and ensure the reflection from the neck or gorget feathers on the colorful males and I had all sorts of excuses for not trying it myself. I thought that lighting up the birds might scare them or annoy the birds. I didn’t want the images to look unnatural. I didn’t want to be tied down with a lot of heavy lighting equipment since I like to move frequently from one location to another. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on flash equipment. Yet, I kept reading about how much lighting the birds could improve my images.

I continued reading and making excuses for my lack of lighting until I visited with photographer George Lepp at a hummingbird festival recently. Mr. Lepp’s set up was simpler than I thought it would be and though he did have a second slave flash set up, he told me I could really improve my hummingbird photography with just one flash unit on the camera.

I got the Canon 580EX II. It arrived a few days ago along with a flash extender also recommended by Mr. Lepp. When the flash arrived I did some indoor practice with camera and flash settings. (Why does new equipment arrive on very windy and rainy days?) Today I was ready to go out and light some little birds. The broadtail below is my first (and only) flash hummingbird. You may click on an image to see it larger.

The flash only fired every third capture in the high speed shooting mode. I’m recharging the batteries to see if I can improve that. If it doesn’t improve with fresh batteries, I may check into an additional battery pack, like the ones Mr. Lepp had connected to his flash units.

I don’t usually photograph at this particular feeder location because the background isn’t very pretty, but that’s where the bird went and I followed. I also don’t usually photograph them on the feeders, so next I shall try flashing the hummingbirds as they hover around the wild current flowers.

After reading Mr. Lepp’s column in Outdoor Photographer for a few years, it was interesting to meet him and his wife, Kathryn. Now, thanks to the Lepps sharing photography tips with people at the hummingbird festival, I’m hoping to improve my hummingbird photography.

hummingbirds

The butterflies and hummingbirds were in love with the flowering shrubs around the pool in Castroville, TX. I took my camera to the pool and watched for hummingbirds while I swam. I’d climb out of the pool, dry my hands and the hummingbirds would usually leave, but the butterflies stayed and posed with the yellow and red flowers. The shrub has common names of Pride of Barbados, orRed Bird of Paradise, mimosa-like leaves and seed pods.

butterflies, Castroville, hummingbirds