{"id":18026,"date":"2013-09-03T04:00:49","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T10:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=18026"},"modified":"2013-09-02T19:19:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T01:19:53","slug":"my-third-day-with-the-antelope-island-hummingbirds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/03\/my-third-day-with-the-antelope-island-hummingbirds\/","title":{"rendered":"My Third Day With The Antelope Island Hummingbirds"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent three mornings with the Hummingbirds of Antelope Island last week.\u00a0 Each day the number of birds and amount of activity declined so I’m thinking some of them are\u00a0moving out.\u00a0 All but one of these images are from the third day.<\/p>\n

Despite my lack of experience shooting hummingbirds I’m already developing preferences for settings and backgrounds when photographing them.\u00a0 My tastes are sometimes overwhelmed\u00a0by all the flower color, especially when there’s so many flowers and they’re all the same color so I like as much variety as I can get in my backgrounds.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Shades of pink\u00a0have never\u00a0been my favorite colors…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hummingbird<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not set up<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I’d often get backgrounds like this – a mixture of out of focus flowers (Rocky Mountain Bee Plant) and greenery.\u00a0 There’s a lot of color here but it works pretty well for me because the background flowers are so soft and out of focus.\u00a0\u00a0 When they’re more in focus back there\u00a0I find\u00a0them distracting.\u00a0 I have many shots like that, where I really like the bird but the background – \u00a0not so much.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hummingbird<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not set up<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Occasionally I’d get a bird feeding\u00a0at an isolated\u00a0flower with\u00a0the golden color of dried grasses in morning light\u00a0as background, which I like for variety (and for the fact that it’s not an artificial or Photoshopped background as is so often the case for shots like this).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hummingbird<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not set up<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But I think my favorites are those where I\u00a0mostly have greenery of the bee plant as background and the bird is hovering slightly away from the flower, which gives a great look at the entire bird rather than having the bill buried in the flower and partially hidden.\u00a0 But then I like the feeding behavior too, so I guess I’m vacillating\u00a0– nothing new for me, especially when I’m venturing into\u00a0unexplored territory\u00a0(lack of experience shooting hummers).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hummingbird<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not set up<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I got a few shots with the beak open and tongue sticking out.\u00a0\u00a0 This\u00a0image isn’t my\u00a0best technically but I like the behavior.<\/p>\n

In a comment on one of my\u00a0two hummingbird posts last week, Jo\u00a0Smith provided a link to an absolutely fascinating clip<\/a> about hummingbird tongues.\u00a0 If\u00a0you didn’t see it then I highly recommend that you watch it.\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you, Jo!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"hummingbird<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not set up<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

One last shot of one of the birds feeding.<\/p>\n

Something I’m still trying to wrap my head around to some degree is the relationship between shutter speed, depth of field and the sharpness of\u00a0the whirring wings when shooting these tiny birds in flight.\u00a0 The shutter speed of the third and fifth images was extremely fast but the wings in those images don’t seem to be significantly sharper than the other shots with much slower shutter speeds.\u00a0\u00a0That may be because the wings at the apex position are moving slower than they are\u00a0during the downbeat, it may be\u00a0a depth of field thing at f\/5.6 or it may be a combination of the two.<\/p>\n

Figuring it out and fine tuning my technique next\u00a0summer (or earlier if the\u00a0birds hang around a little longer)\u00a0should be fun.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent three mornings with the Hummingbirds of Antelope Island last week. Each day the number of birds and amount of activity declined so I’m thinking some of them are already moving out. All but one of these images are from the third day.<\/p>\n

Despite my lack of experience shooting hummingbirds I’m already developing preferences for settings and backgrounds when photographing them. My tastes are sometimes overwhelmed by all the flower color, especially when there’s so many flowers and they’re all the same color so I like as much variety as I can get in my backgrounds. Shades of pink have never been my favorite colors…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,334],"tags":[917,1635,1637,1628,1636],"class_list":["post-18026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","tag-antelope-island-3","tag-bee-plant","tag-camera-settings","tag-hummingbird","tag-tongue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/hummingbird-7334-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4GK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}