Many of us have heard the sound of hummingbirds feasting at our home bird feeders. The sound is unique. Almost like the sound of a large bumblebee.
We will painstakingly cook up the hummingbirds’ favorite nectar, with just the right amount of sweetness, to lure them back for more intimate viewing.
While this tiny bird is a common sight during spring, summer, and fall, they offer one huge challenge for photographers to capture a good photograph of them.
In today’s episode of the Nature Photography podcast, we will learn more about the simple hummingbird and see how photographing them is not all that simple.
As with any wildlife photographic subject, it is always best to learn as much as you can about your subject so that way you can better predict where they will be and more accurately understand their movements. With this information, the photographer can take better pictures of their intended subjects.
There are over 350 species of hummingbirds most of them living in warm climates such as Central America and South America. Only five are generally seen in North America, so that narrows it down quite a bit as to which hummingbird we are dealing with.
Those five are the Ruby-Throated, Rufous, Costa’s and Allen’s and Anna’s hummingbird.
In California, we mostly see the Allen’s and Anna’s hummingbird and some Rufous hummingbirds. Allen’s stay a little bit south while Anna’s spend their time North as far as Canada and Alaska.
While the Rufous and Allen’s are very similar in their appearance, you mostly will be able to tell the difference due to where you see them. The Allen’s’ hummingbird will stick to the southern part of the west coast while Rufous will go all the way up to Alaska making this bird’s migratory mileage, thousands of miles.
The Anna’s hummingbird’s male version will have a bright red crown and throat, while the female mostly a dull green. The Allen’s and Rufous hummingbirds both have a dramatic splash of orange for the crown and on their sides.
In the southern part of the US you will likely find the Costa’s hummingbird. This species has a super vibrant purple crown. So bright, that it’s hard to capture the color on your camera’s sensors but I will give you some tips on that later.
East of the Mississippi River is where you will find the Ruby-throated hummingbird. Named for how the male looks, this hummingbird Summers in the United States and up to Canada and winters back down in Central America.
All hummingbirds act pretty much the same regardless of the species, so wherever you are you should be able to predict their patterns.
The hummingbird is famous for its hovering behavior. They seem to stay in one place in mid-air with wing beats up to 90 flaps a second. Then they are gone as fast as they appeared zipping off in random angles.
The hummingbird will feed on tiny insects and spiders as well as nectar from flowers. They will hover in front of brightly colored flowers and dip their long beaks deep into the flower to take a sip of the sugar-loaded nectar.
This is great news for us photographers, as we know that they will come to visit a hummingbird feeder that we fill with a sugar water recipe that they can’t resist.
The first challenge you will face photographing hummingbirds is that their wings are moving pretty fast. As the photographer, you will have an artistic decision to make. Do you want sharp wings or blurry wings?
When photographing hummingbirds, their 90 beats per second wing speed presents the challenge of how do we want to show their wings while they are in flight? Do we want to show the wings blurred or stopped cold?
For the version that shows the motion of the wings flapping, a kind of ghosted effect of the wings moving so fast it looks like a blurry fan, this can be the easiest technique to pull off.
A shutter speed of 1/500 of a second will certainly freeze the hummingbird while he’s hovering but his wings will be quite blurry from the movement. Most cameras today can have shutter speeds of up to 1/8000 of a second that may very well work at sharpening up those buzzing wing flaps.
The best way is to do some testing to see what you like best.
Start with an active bird feeder and stay as far away as you can so you won’t disrupt the hummingbird while he’s feeding. Use a lens that will allow you to get a nice shot of the tiny bird, so it is likely a telephoto lens of some type, 200 to 300 mm, in most cases.
If the hummers in your area like to sit on a perch and drink, this is the best way to start. You won’t need to do anything fancy just shoot test photographs changing out your apertures with that lens. You want to discover what aperture works best to photograph the hummingbird with that particular lens. You want enough depth of field to make sure the whole bird is in focus. But not too much depth-of-field that the background becomes distracting.
Once you have your location, and your aperture figured out, it’s time to experiment with the shutter speed.
If your lighting is staying the same for a while, switch over to manual mode and start to move your shutter speed faster. Remember, every time you make your shutter speed faster, you will have to increase your ISO to allow you to get that same base exposure.
Move your shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second and see if you like the results on the moving hummingbird. Keep going until you reach 1/8000 of a second. You will have to decide what works for your tastes. Go check them out large on the computer, don’t make these kinds of decisions solely based on what you see in the back of your digital camera.
Check out the wingtips. Are the tips sharp? How much blur do you want? Check all the levels with the different shutter speeds and try to hone in on what you like.
To improve your photography of hummingbirds, put your camera on a tripod. I like to use a tripod with a Wimberley Gimbal head. This way, I can move the lens and camera quickly without having to crank down the knobs to lock the lens and camera in place. Because the Wimberley is a gimbal head, you can balance your set up when you start and know that the camera will stay exactly where you left it.
When hummingbirds are hovering around a feeder they are pretty easy to track, but I’d say don’t even bother trying to track them when they are flying to and from the feeder, they are just way too fast. But while they are near the feeder they will likely do the same maneuvers over and over again. Up, down, left, right. If you watch them enough, you will figure out their pattern.
After many hours of watching the hummingbirds in my area, they will hover, take a drink, then tilt their head back and rise up a couple of inches, then they go back down to the feeder. This is valuable information, as now I can predict their movements when they are coming in to visit the nectar supply.
Another thing to watch for is their perch. I’m not talking about perching ON the feeder itself, but when they are “next in line” to have a drink. If you watch them, they will usually land on a limb of a nearby bush, wait, and then zip in for a quick drink.
There is a hierarchy to drinking at the feeder. So, perching somewhere else to see if the coast is clear, is very common. Many times, there is a dominant male who wants to keep the feeder to himself.
In my area, he sits nearby and then buzzes in to chase off any others who want to drink at the bar. When he finally goes back to his nest, six or seven of the others will all drink at the same time while the bully is gone.
Knowing where your birds’ perch can be discovered by just watching and following their patterns. One of the birds in my area will perch within a couple of inches of the same spot every time. This is a great time to photograph them sitting still and this is predictable.
Next up , is to take a look at your images and determine if the wings are sharp enough. Even at 1/8000 of a second, the wing can still appear blurry. The next step you need to take if you want really sharp wings is to use electronic flash.
So here is my warning about how technical this can get and using flash is not for everyone. However, if you want to take your hummingbird images to the next level, then keep listening, this will get pretty detailed.
Using electronic flash will take a bit more patience, but the payoff is fantastic.
For this exercise, we are going to work with portable electronic strobes. There is a couple of good reasons to use the portable versions, the first of which is their small size and portability, and that you can place them anywhere and not have to have an outlet nearby to plug them in. However, the most important reason is that with the smaller flashes, you can create a very fast light source.
This part is important, so follow along, the more power you output from the flash, the slower the light is. The less power you use, the faster it will go off. When you are using your flash on manual mode and set it at full power, the strobe goes off at about 1/1000 of a second. However, if you set your flash on 1/128thpower, it can go off at 1/40,000 of a second. Now that is pretty fast.
The downside shooting at this low of a power is a diminished volume of light. At 1/128 power, not much light is being cast on your subject. As you move up on the range, 1/64 power gets you about 1/30,000 of a second and on up. At 1/16thpower you are shooting at 1/10,000 of a second.
I would suggest that you start there at 1/16thpower and if you find you need more stopping speed then cut the power of your flash.
The logic is pretty simple, to get more light, ad more flash units. In large setups, it’s not uncommon to have 3 or 4 flash units going off. In order to get good, stop-action shots of the hummingbirds that are coming into your yard, there is some set up that needs to happen first.
To start with you need to do a test. This is where you set your flashes up and put your camera on a tripod, positioned to where you want to capture a hovering hummingbird. The lights are going to have to be on separate light stands and pointed pretty close to where you want your subject. You will want to shoot at the same time of day that you can expect hummingbirds. Early morning and late evening is a very popular feeding time.
Begin with a small stuffed animal or a thick stick to act as your subject. Try to find something that would replicate the size of one of your hummingbirds. Mount it on a stand to stay in the same spot throughout the testing.
Put your first strobe, set on manual at 1/16thpower aimed at the subject. We will call this your main light. Have the light coming from the right, slightly above the bird feeder. Essentially shining in the hummingbird’s face.
Next, put a light behind the subject in the back left of the frame. Make sure this strobe unit is not seen by the camera. This will be your separation light. Start with it at 1/16thpower as well.
Set your camera on the highest shutter speed that your camera can sync with a strobe, my Nikons are set at 1/250thof a second.
You will need some sort of trigger that fires the flashes when your shutter goes off. This can be in the form of a radio transmitter or infrared. Refer to the make and model of your camera to get that answer.
Take a test shot. If you are shooting at ISO 100 and at f/8 or f/16 your background should be dark or black (as long as your background is not in full sunlight.) This is a good thing. The darker the background means that you are not getting any ambient light into the shot and that it has been totally lit by strobes. This also means you now have total control over the shot with your lights and the speed of the flashes will determine the stopped motion of the shot.
If you are not getting a good exposure yet, try moving the flashes closer to the subject. Try adjusting your f/stop or finally adjust your ISO. Remember, increasing your ISO is always your last resort.
You can adjust the power of your flashes to change the look as well. Maybe a little less power from the separation light. Since the angle of that light might be too bright for your tastes.
Lastly, consider the background. You have options here. One way is to hang a drape that will be a green fabric that is out of focus. Some photographers go the extra step of taking a photograph of greenery, completely out of focus, making a print and hanging it as the background. You then will have to add a light to that background, yes, a third light to light the background.
Now the shot of your test stick should be looking pretty good.
The next challenge is to wait for the live hummingbirds to come to visit.
Since wild animals are wary of changes, you may want to build your set up slowly. Put a light stand out there one evening. A few days later when they are comfortable with that, add your second one. Another day or so hang your background. Slowly add your strobes and when the birds are comfortable feeding again, turn the strobes on with fresh batteries. Hook up your camera a good distance away and wait. When they get hungry they’ll come. Don’t fire the strobes at all at the first subject. Take your time. This is an ongoing project. Let your subjects get used to all this extra equipment.
Lastly, you will want to improve your foreground. Until now, you have been photographing the hummingbirds at your feeder. But wouldn’t it look more natural if they were feeding from a flower?
Anchor a flower there instead of the feeder. Once your flower is in place, take a syringe or an eyedropper and place a few drops of your feeder liquid down in the throat of the flower. Now when the hummingbird comes to drink they are treated to dipping into a real flower. This makes a much better photograph. Obviously, you will want to position your camera so that there is not a bird feeder in the background, you will want to make this whole shot look natural.
There is yet another level you can achieve with your hummingbird photography and that is changing the quality of light.
So far, you are using three electronic flash units pointed directly at your hummingbird subject. Some species have crowns that almost look like tiny sequins, reflecting light in all kinds of directions. The Costa’s hummingbird is in this category. And for this reason, they can be difficult to capture the colors the way you see them. When using a straight flash to illuminate such a reflective subject, the colors may not pop like you are seeing.
The reason for that, is you have essentially a very sharp and tiny light source in your electronic flash. Kind of like the sun appears at noon up in the sky. A very sharp light, with deep shadows.
To change the quality of light, you will need to soften it. The easiest way is to buy or build a small soft box to bounce your light into, to create a larger light source. Kind of like when you have a layer of clouds that diffuses the sunlight into a much softer light.
You can also point your flash backward and bounce the light off a piece of white cardboard.
Another way is to shoot your light through a piece of diffusion material like white plexiglass
This will soften the light and give reflective parts of the hummingbird much better color rendition and softer shadows.
This kind of diffusion does come with a price. You are outputting less light volume.
This means you may have to boost your flash’s output, thereby reducing how fast the strobe goes off. One solution is to put more than one flash into the softbox so you can get more power of light, without suffering a faster flash speed or bumping up your ISO and degrade your photographs.
After you get your light to work the way you want, the next thing you may want to experiment with is moving your camera closer. That may mean, setting your camera up with a remote shutter trigger to fire the camera when you are not near it.
The remote is usually plugged into the cable release port or there are some smartphone apps that can fire the camera remotely and let you look at the results right there on your phone.
As you move your camera closer, you can experiment with wider lenses. Yep, try using a wide-angle lens staged right up next to the bird feeder and fire remotely. This will give you a large depth shot of your yard and make an interesting view of the birds and their habitat.
So, there you go, everything I know about photographing hummingbirds.
Start off easy with just a bird feeder and your camera. If you want to progress, look at using different lenses, and finally when you are really ready for a challenge, try using the electronic flash setups.