Monday in Nature April 2, 2018

Basic Guidelines: In the strictest sense, nature photography should not include "hand of man elements". Please refrain from images with buildings or human made structures like roads, fences, walls. Pets are not permitted. Captive subjects in zoos, arboretums, or aquariums are permitted, but must be declared, and must focus on the subject, not the captivity. Images with obvious human made elements will likely be deleted from the thread, with an explanation to the photographer. Guidelines are based on PSA rules governing Nature photography which also cover the Nature Forum. Keep your image at/under 1000 pixels on the long axis for in-line viewing. Note that this includes photos hosted off-site at Flicker, Photobucket, your own site, etc Are you new to this thread? We post one image per week.

Tule Elk

Here is California, we had a long winter (although it wasn't nearly as cold as it was on the US East Coast and Mid West). It was still quite cold in mid-to-late March, but suddenly spring arrives in a hurry: Anna's hummingbird feeding on pride of Madeira flowers.

Harbingers of spring.

Porcupine by Tom Yin, on Flickr

Red-winged Blackbird Bleats

Untitled by David Stephens, on Flickr

Here is California, we had a long winter (although it wasn't nearly as cold as it was on the US East Coast and Mid West). It was still quite cold in mid-to-late March, but suddenly spring arrives in a hurry: Anna's hummingbird feeding on pride of Madeira flowers.

 

[ATTACH=full]1239480[/ATTACH]

Beautiful. You must have had a lot of light?

Lilac-Breasted Roller. I almost did not bother to take this shot as I would much prefer the bird to be perched on a tree. Now I am glad I did as there are enough of them on the tree.

Nikon D300s with 70-200mm f/2.8 lens @200mm. 1/640s; f/7.1; ISO 1600.

Beautiful. You must have had a lot of light?

Thanks, but I didn't have a lot of light.

I captured that image yesterday, April 1, 2018. It was a sunny day, but somehow that Anna's hummingbird preferred one particular plant that was in the shades, I was hand holding a relatively slow Nikon 200-500mm/f5.6 lens wide open at f5.6, 500mm. I set the camera body to auto ISO at 1/1000 sec, and the ISO used was 4000 (four thousand). Fortunately high-ISO results from the new generation of DSLRs are quite good, and this small JPEG is not showing all the noise due to high ISO.

Thanks, but I didn't have a lot of light.

 

I captured that image yesterday, April 1, 2018. It was a sunny day, but somehow that Anna's hummingbird preferred one particular plant that was in the shades, I was hand holding a relatively slow Nikon 200-500mm/f5.6 lens wide open at f5.6, 500mm. I set the camera body to auto ISO at 1/1000 sec, and the ISO used was 4000 (four thousand). Fortunately high-ISO results from the new generation of DSLRs are quite good, and this small JPEG is not showing all the noise due to high ISO.

I'm glad that you were able to freeze the wings at only 1/1000th sec. I had to go to 1/2000th with ruby throated.

I'm glad that you were able to freeze the wings at only 1/1000th sec. I had to go to 1/2000th with ruby throated.

Well, after photographing hummingbirds for years, I have become extremely picky about my images. Unless it is otherwise exceptional, I pretty much delete everything when the wings are not in the up position. I am shooting at a very high frame rate so that I have a lot of images to choose from, and a lot to delete. And when the wings are up, there is a very brief pause from moving up to down. Therefore, I don't necessarily need a very fast shutter to more or less freeze the wings.