Took this today on my drive back from a quick photo nature walk. It’s 50 degrees and this is my first year living in the Willamette Valley. Never experienced a climate like this and I’ve been seeing these hummingbirds around in the Winter!? I think from my guide it’s an Anna’s Hummingbird. They are the only ones that should be here all year round. He definitely has his territory because I always see his cute little silhouette sitting on a tree in this same area on the side of the road as I drive by. So, I had to find a place to pull off so I could get out and get a picture. He was making a chirping, humming noise.
Specific Feedback Requested
Anything, I think it’s probably not the best photo I have but I like the pose and it shows the red and in a lot of my photos it’s hidden.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
ISO 3200
300mm
f/6.3
1/1250
Adjusted exposure, highlights and shadows, and cropped
Definitely an Anna’s, Vanessa. I hadn’t realized you’d become a Northwesterner. You’ll like it out here. I think this image is a bit overexposed and you could probably crop it down quite a bit. It’s a great pose. I’m seeing some color fringing on both the bird and the stems on the right, something that happens a fair amount when photographing against a bright sky. Check you software to see if there’s an option for lens correction and/or chromatic aberration correction in the RAW converter-they can perform magic these days.
Good to know the type! There was one right where I live eating bugs out of a dead tree about a month ago! Yeah, I should have brought the ISO down a notch. Do you mean like right in my camera there’s a lens correction adjustment?
A little overexposed and could most likely be brought down a bit in software. A dandy pose. Perhaps would work as a vertical crop. They often hang out on the same limb if not the same bush.
The guys have covered the technical side, Vanessa so I’ll just say good catch. Waiting for my hummers. They always show up within a day or two either side of April 15.
I did bring it down but I guess not enough, it seemed like when I was trying that it was making the bird too dark. I probably ruined it from the start! But I know I’ll get more chances! Thanks for your help!
If you were looking at the dark side of the bird, that is a difficult exposure to work with against a bright sky. A raw converter will let you bring down the overexposed areas and lighten the darks a bit, although the latter will bring out any noise that is there. It’s better to lighten the darks by moving the Blacks slider right than the Shadows slider, if that will give a good appearance – less noise that way.
