Humming bird in the garden copy
Nov, 2015Views
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daveore
November 24, 2015
Hello and welcome,that is a beautiful shot of the Humming bird you have managed to get,very well done.
Minu
November 24, 2015
Hi, thank you very much! It was very difficult to capture him as he was tiny and very fast. It took me several days and several shots to get the right picture.
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
The photo of ruby-throated humming bird was taken at my mother-in-law's home in North Carolina. She is a nature lover and has created this beautiful garden for the birds and bees. Every year three humming birds (2 male and a female) visit her feeders. Its so much fun to watch them play around the garden.Time
This photo is one of my favorites. It was the beginning of fall and I took this photo around mid morning . They were buzzing around the flowers and I couldn't get a good shot. So I sat on the front porch and stayed quiet. After few minutes they were back and was playing around. I noticed that they were around these pink flowers a lot. So I focused my camera on that spot hoping they would feed on that flower. As I guessed,one of them came by and I was able to get this shot,Lighting
There was overcast and not much of sunlight was falling on the garden. Technically to counter act it, photographers use high ISO, open up the aperture and or reduce the shutter speed. Photographing a fast moving subject on a cloudy day can be a bit tricky. 1. Since my subject is fast, I had to use fast shutter speed to capture a sharp image. I shot this picture in manual mode with an ISO 3200 and shutter speed 1/800 sec, f 5.6. Using high ISO in low light will result in noise (as you can see in my image), try to avoid this as much as possible. 2. Overcast has flat lighting, hence to give dimensions to the bird, I chose a spot where there are taller plants (look at the right side of the photo) so it will cast a light shadow on the bird. 3. Also, by including the flower and plants in the picture, it added a pop of color to otherwise a gray day 4. Another way to make your subject stand out on a cloudy day is to make sure the background behind them is a fair amount lighter or darker than they are. One of the ways to achieve this is by using a telephoto lens with wide aperture and making sure that there is good amount of distance between the subject and background. This will give you a blurry background making your subject stand out.Equipment
I use and love my Canon EOS REBEL T3i. Its a great beginners digital camera. It was my first Christmas gift from my husband and holds a very special place in my life. The lens I used to take this photo was the telephoto lens - EFS 55-250mm.Inspiration
Humming birds are one of my favorite birds. They are just wonderful creatures and so beautiful. I have been waiting to capture a picture of a humming bird in flight, just because of its sheer difficulty. They are so unpredictable and tiny, its quite difficult to get them in your frame. Being an amateur photographer, I have always worked towards enhancing my skills and taking this photo under low light was a challenge that I took upon to become a better photographer.Editing
I did not do any post- processing in this photo. With wildlife photography, I like to maintain the mood of the scene. Towards the end of fall, humming birds feed as much as they can to prepare for the long trip down south across the gulf.Here I wanted to freeze a very important natural event - the preparation for migration. A post-processing tip - I have found that to remove noise, Neat image works very well (you can integrate this in to Photoshop) and recently, Nik collection from google does a pretty good job too.In my camera bag
I am very happy with my Canon EOS Rebel T3i Digital SLR Camera. I carry both my lens - EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens and EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS II Telephoto Zoom Lens. I also sometimes carry 58MM 0.43x Altura Photo Professional HD Wide Angle Lens, which takes pretty good macro shots. Plus I have some memory cards and lens cleaning kit.Feedback
A good photographer not only knows his equipment but also studies his subject. This is very important in wildlife photography. You need to learn about your subject to get the picture that you want. In this case, the 3 important things to know about humming birds; 1. They are tiny hence avoid zooming in too much in to the scene, since you will end up searching for him and probably will lose the moment. 2. They are fast, so shoot in continuous mode with fast shutter speed 3. Although they are unpredictable, one thing is for sure, humming birds will always come back to the same food source. If you see the bird visiting a particular flower, they will come back again to feed on it.
