Every August I travel with my closest friends to a very secluded cabin in the Santa Fe National Forest to decompress, get out of the oppressive Houston heat, and to do some photography just for me.
One of my favorite things to photograph? Hummingbirds.
It’s not an easy task though, which is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much. The birds are fast, nimble, and viciously desperate little creatures.
The first step? About ten hummingbird feeders all placed a few feet from each other. This gets the frenzy started. Next, you remove all the hummingbird feeders except for one or two and you end up with a localized swarm for a few short minutes.
They have no fear of me, or my equipment. To them, I move as fast as a turtle.
I like my photographs to have an identifiable style to them. To accomplish this I choose to isolate the hummingbirds on a black background in order to better show their amazing colors. I use very powerful strobes to accomplish this.
When the strobes fire they are brighter than the sun so you must know how to set your camera to properly expose for this extreme bright light, which in turn causes everything in the background to go black as the background is not receiving the same intensity of light compared to the light striking the hummingbird.
Below are some of my favorite results from past years. These shots were taken mid-day. Scroll to the bottom to see my camera setup.
For a bit of fun, when looking at each image try to count how many strobes are being used to illuminate the hummingbird.
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