Hummingbird numbers have increased at the feeders and late summer resource guarding has begun. With 6 feeders placed on our property, fights occur on a regular basis as our deck becomes the best area due to abundant flowers and feeders. I was waiting for birds to drop in on thge perch by the oriole feeders when I detected some motion near our trumpet vine. A young of the year ruby-throated hummingbird was perched on one of the flowers and I swiveled my rig for the shot. Slight over-exposure minimized noise and was able to get enough detail in plant and bird for the image.
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Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Z9 600mm f4 + 1.4x teleconverter, fill flash -1.7ev (1/640 sec. at f7.1`, ISO 1600) Levels, curve adjustment, Topaz DeNoise, Crop for Comp.
I like the high key look, Jim, and the pose of the hummingbird is perfect. The only thing I’d change is to remove the vertical out of focus background leaf on the left. For some reason it draws my eye.
Hi Jim
I would really like to know how you get the clean white high key look? The framing is nice and as always Hummingbirds rule. Nice work.
Peter
So far every high key, I have tried comes out off color and not clean.
Wonderful pose and perch with great detail and colors! The fill flash looks completely natural. I think @Dennis_Plank has a good point about that leaf. Cropping in to remove it would place the hummer in a more balanced position, for me.
Excellent high key image here Jim. I could see adding a tad more space to the top but that’s just a small nit. Otherwise this is an outstanding image with superb detail and color. I could also see cloning a way that leaf on the left-hand side that sticks up vertically.
Thank you @Dennis_Plank, @Max_Waugh, @Paul_Breitkreuz, @peter, @Diane_Miller, and @David_Schoen. @Max_Waugh, the BG is a large cloud and I pushed up the exposure to pick out the details in the hummingbird. @peter, for high key images, you have to over-expose the BG by 1.7 to 2 stops which can reduce the contrast of the subject by reducing the darkness of the shadows. Pick a bright, overcast day and find one of your ospreys for practice. If my flash was set at a stronger setting, I may have been able to get a more dynamic BG with a properly exposed subject. I will have to clone out the vertical leaf and see how it looks. That’s a very valid evaluation of this image from the posted critiques…Jim
I’ve never tried high key shooting, Jim but this looks great. Excellent details all-around and, to me at least, great color considering it’s intentionally overexposed. Good work. Thanks for the explanation of how you captured this.
