Hummers

I recently had the opportunity to visit a place where there were more hummingbirds than I had ever seen in one place.  I'm sure this is small news to some people, but I had never seen 20-30 hummers flying around in the same place before.  Normally, at my house, we're lucky to see three or four at the same time.

Anyway, we drove like three hours one way to visit some folks in Terre Haute, Indiana.  They live on a residential lot that backs up to a corn field with neighbors on either side.  Apparently, they have been putting out the feeders for many years, so they had a "reputation" with the birds.  It is also getting time for migration, so the place was literally swarming with birds.

I'd like to thank my friend, Nancy, for including me in her adventure.  We had a great time there and meeting her friends with the hummingbirds.  Other than two half hour traffic jams on the way home, it was a spectacular day.  Make sure and check out her page at the link above for more hummers and sunflowers.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from the day.

I shot all of these with my Sigma 50-500mm lens in manual mode.  Some were shot at 1/250th with a flash and the rest at aperture priority f6.3.  There was a lot of available light, so, it wasn't too hard to grab one or two in focus, as I was able to get some shutters up to 1/2000.  It was interesting to note that there was only one male who was visiting all during our shooting, but as soon as we went inside, half a dozen more showed up.  It was amazing to see so many birds at one time.

Here are some shots from a few years ago, shot with my old Nikon 70-300mmG version $150.00 clunker in available light as well.  That was a miserable lens, but occasionally, I wish I had it back.  That's on my bucket list, but this time it will be the newer VR version.

These were shot from my back deck.  We had a good amount of visits that year, but this year was pretty sparse.  Maybe I should grow corn in the back yard and more birds will come. lol

If you want to see all my shots, check this link.  I'm currently combing the archives for more decent shots of hummers from the past, so maybe check back later and see if there are any additions.  Thanks for looking, and don't forget, the correct formula for hummers is 1:4 sugar to water.  Excess sugar is not good for them.

A Visit to the Sunflower Field

Today I went out to the sunflower field.  I used to know where another one was but it's no longer populated with sunflowers, and that's why I call this one "the" sunflower field.  There doesn't seem to be another anywhere in the vicinity anymore.  Too bad too, because the other one had a much, much larger variety of sunflower.  The kind that grow 6-8 feet tall and are bigger around than a dinner plate.  They were cool, and it was necessary to bring a ladder to shoot over the tops of the field, but no more.  So, we shall not lament, as we had a good time in the sunflower field today, (where the blooms are but six to eight inches in diameter and the stalks are four feet or less) and we got a couple of decent shots.  We also noted an abundance of insects and birds populating the field and it was nice to almost get a good shot of a Yellow Warbler?.  Someone can correct me if I misidentify the bird.  So, take a look at these and if you want more, you can visit the album of all the shots here.  Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy.

Just a note about this image if you are wondering.  It was processed in Adobe Camera RAW and the effect is that of reducing the clarity slider, in case you are interested.  It's an interesting effect and I like the little bit of halo it adds.

Compare this one to the above.  It's complete opposite processing in the sharpening department.  I worked the clarity slider to the right to sharpen, increased the blacks and saturation a bit, and then sharpened in Photoshop again for the final.

I like this one, as the leaf on the right seem to portray a form of salutation, as if to say, Hello, welcome, I don't mind posing for you,  and thank you for taking my picture.  hahaha

This is an extremely hard crop.  I was shooting at 500mm from about 50 feet when I got this guy.  Lots of foliage to navigate to get one of these guys.  It was hard to get them in the open or on top of the higher flowers.

Old Dutch Masters Shoot

Last Saturday I worked with a group from Ohio Valley Camera Club setting up and shooting still life in the vein of the "Old Dutch Masters".  There were approximately 40 attendees for this shoot, including the instructors and coordinators.  Bob Wilcox, John and Cathy Steudel, and Jerry Spohr were the venue hosts and did a wonderful job.

The afternoon started off with a power point presentation by Nancy Germer and then the group was broken out into four different groups.  There were two studio set ups with all the amenities and lighting and fixtures you could want and there were two home made set ups, using whatever was available to set up and light the subjects, the point being that you can do this sort of thing without investing a lot of money and using available household items.

Everyone was tasked with bringing in some sort of object to occupy the still life sets and it was all arranged on some central tables where everyone from each of the four shooting venues would draw objects for their set ups.

I was in charge of one of the home made (minimalist) set ups and there were six shooters working there setting up the compositions and the lighting, with a bit of help from me.  I was seriously impressed with the talent present and the fact that we were working with bare bones equipment made it all the more astounding when looking at some of the results.

I didn't get too much chance to visit the other locations and shoot them, thus, these photos are from some of the set ups we put together at our location.  Hope you like.

This scene was set up by my friend Connie Sanders, with just a bit of help from the group.

This was a group composition, but was started by one person, who's name I don't recall, but a brilliant idea, none the less.

This stuff was too much to overlook.  I would have thought there would be a waiting line for these items.  Great stuff.

I brought the window and the pitcher.  I was having second thoughts about hauling such a large object, but everyone loved it so glad I did.  Also glad I didn't clean the glass of all the sawdust and cobwebs.  The tight crop is to hide the plastic and aluminum parts of the window and try to make it look a bit more "antique".

All in all a great shoot and there were a lot more and different set ups and compositions.  It was quite a treat and also inspiring how many people had such a great time and how many excellent photos came out of the shoot.  You can view a whole lot more of them on Ohio Valley Camera Club's website here.  I think there are about 125 all together including some black light images from a box by Jerry Spohr.