Tiny Little Feet.
I went to my sister's house today to photograph the swarms of hummingbirds that flock to her feeders this time of year. I don't usually publish pictures of a feeder, but I was so taken with the tiny feet here that I decided to post it. These birds are so small that they're the size of a ping pong ball and weight the same as an american nickel.
I learned the lighting that I used here from a book by Linda Robbins called The Hummingbird Guide. Her method is to use a minimum of 5 to 6 strobes, a supplied background, and photograph the birds in the shade so that you don't have to overpower the sunlight. When you use multiple strobes on a subject in the shade you can use lower power settings for each flash which results in shorter flash durations which means it freezes the wing blur. The backdrop is a painting my wife did for this purpose. I used 6 Yongnuo strobes because I wanted to use identical manual power output for each flash . One strobe was pointed at the background, one was underneath the feeder, and the other 4 strobes surrounded the feeder. The strobes were all at around 1/32nd power, in manual mode, and were triggered by a Yongnuo RF-603N., and you can see the EXIF info on the side. This method is the only way that I've been able to photograph one of these birds with little, or no, wing blur. I've finally learned to pre-focus on a spot near the feeder, using Live View, so that the birds are usually all in focus. I can then sit farther away from the feeder and trigger the strobes and the camera remotely. Down below in the first comment, you can see a picture of the setup that I used on that particular day.
I've taken quite a few pictures of hummers over the years and put them an album creatively called Hummingbirds.
Tiny Little Feet.
I went to my sister's house today to photograph the swarms of hummingbirds that flock to her feeders this time of year. I don't usually publish pictures of a feeder, but I was so taken with the tiny feet here that I decided to post it. These birds are so small that they're the size of a ping pong ball and weight the same as an american nickel.
I learned the lighting that I used here from a book by Linda Robbins called The Hummingbird Guide. Her method is to use a minimum of 5 to 6 strobes, a supplied background, and photograph the birds in the shade so that you don't have to overpower the sunlight. When you use multiple strobes on a subject in the shade you can use lower power settings for each flash which results in shorter flash durations which means it freezes the wing blur. The backdrop is a painting my wife did for this purpose. I used 6 Yongnuo strobes because I wanted to use identical manual power output for each flash . One strobe was pointed at the background, one was underneath the feeder, and the other 4 strobes surrounded the feeder. The strobes were all at around 1/32nd power, in manual mode, and were triggered by a Yongnuo RF-603N., and you can see the EXIF info on the side. This method is the only way that I've been able to photograph one of these birds with little, or no, wing blur. I've finally learned to pre-focus on a spot near the feeder, using Live View, so that the birds are usually all in focus. I can then sit farther away from the feeder and trigger the strobes and the camera remotely. Down below in the first comment, you can see a picture of the setup that I used on that particular day.
I've taken quite a few pictures of hummers over the years and put them an album creatively called Hummingbirds.