Ruby-throated Hummingbird
There are many ways to make a picture of a hummingbird. Some people may like to present every single feather to the viewer and ‘nuke’ the birds with tons of flash light in order to freeze the action or obtain depth of focus. This is perfectly fine if counting every feather is important for the story, like maybe in a bird guide book. With still photography it remains a challenge to tell the story of an extremely fast moving bird and even lots of video footage I have seen doesn’t always meet the expectations. For me it is natural to have at least the wings blurred in order to tell the story of the extremely high frequencies of their wing beats. When the hummingbirds hover for parts of a second in front of a flower or a feeder their body seems to stand still and this is the moment I use for my photos. The metadata of yesterday’s shooting in our front yard show that the exposure was between 1/50 s and 1/320 s. The photo above was shot with a shutter speed of 1/125 s. Sure, the rate of keepers versus misses is not the same as shooting your coin or stamp collection, but hey, the fun is at least ten times bigger… 😉