Flaps and Slats

 Not as sharp as I'd like, but these
things are a challenge!

Wow. What great timing.

Superb!

Perfect!

Great! Perfect background!

You guys are too generous! The background is a wooden fence and I liked it too Sarah, other than the shadow from the fill at the base, which I thought of cloning out, but who has the time! =)

Excellent capture!!!

.. that you have won! Great capture

Than I have a problem with my eyes. Or you

 

Els

Master! bravo! I tried to shoot it my minolta dimage 7i - it's very hard to catch this bird in lens :)) Sharpness is more than ok!

You guys are too generous!

I agree... this is a great capture of a very challenging subject, but it is overrated in my arrogant opinion. I know it is not always fair to compare shots, but this remains my favourite on photo.net. Unfortunately, Christopher Landauer is no longer active in this place and as a result his photographic endeavours are gathering dust in the catacombs of PN.

You know what Peter, I agree that this is getting higher ratings than it deserves, but I don't agree that the example you have provided is better. The red eyes are lame, and I the black background makes it look cut out. I know itﾒs not, but it looks like it is. What mine does have going for it is the open tail. And mine is a female and we all know the ladies are much more popular on this site than the guys will ever be. ;-)

 

I have a few that are similar to Christopher's, minus the black background, and I find them terribly boring. And yes, the ruby throat and green iridescent feathers are included.

 

On the other hand, there was one on here about this time a ten months to a year ago that was a real stunner. I do not know who it was taken by, but it was top notch. Catching them in the hoovering mode, while they are using their tail like flaps and slats is what I find the most interesting. Thanks for the comment.

Great capture !!

You know what, @nthony, I agree that the example I provided is not a better image than yours. It is more than likely that I linked to Christopher's portfolio out of a sense of loyalty to a long lost PN friend... Apart from that, it is also a matter of different tastes, I guess. The open tail argument on your image has a lot of merit. Have to admit that I haven't seen this before, so it may be that you should attract high praise for originality.

Regarding other hummingbird shots, have you checked out this folder by Kim Slonaker?

Nice capture @nthony! Pnina

Ah, Kim. We know Kim. =) She's got some great stuff. I'm not a real bird freak myself;-) but if there was some color like that around here I might start developing more interest.

 

I do know what you meant Peter. I think what it came down to was, I had never tried doing this, and that was all the reason I needed to give it a go. Takes a lot of patience. More than I like to use all at one time!

 

The buzzards are the guys I really want to get. I know of this place where they hang out on these old fence posts, drying their wings at full extension when the sun rises. So far they have been spooked before I could get anything worthwhile.

 

PS- just reading my last comment and that sounded pretty harsh and defensive. I come off as such a spud sometimes. =| I meant no offence to Christopher's image. It's a fine picture. What I did mean was that I know there are much better out there. Especially in the case of my hummingbird pictures. Hopefully, my little joke about the ladies illustrated that I wasn't all that serious.

Anthony,

If anything I think the fanned out tail feathers is the best thing about this image. You also caught him with a good head position and catch light in his eye. The weak points of this shot are the blown out whites of the belly feathers and the dark vertical line in the background. I think you stated it was a fence. If this is your first attempt at hummers, it's not all that bad. These guys can be really difficult to capture.

I've been looking and I'm not sure if my male shots are of the quality of Christopher's. I owe an apology for being so rude. To you and to him too Peter.

No need for that, really... This observer never raised much more than his eyebrows. As we both know, there are some real rude exchanges happening on other pages at PN. For me, it is the feedback that counts, @nthony.

This image has to be a good example of digital photography outdoing film for the purpose of convenience and number of shots taken (you must have taken more than one of each...). How many frames/sec. does the 10D take?

A little over 3 per second I believe, in 9 shot bursts, then it gets busy and has to think. But I actually wasn't shooting bursts of more than 2 because my batteries were getting tired in my flash. But yes, I can't imagine doing this with film. Some of the best shots I thought I had were missing half a beak or the tail! Or they appeared perfect until I saw them full size and noticed the focus was off. It's quite an art to doing this. Or actually, a pain in the arse! It's also kind of cruel seducing these little creatures with sugar water! =)

Never mind the sugar water! You must be pleased to score unique shots like these...

Yeah, I like that one. Funny thing was my friend's wife had asked me if I'd ever seen their tongues. I didn't even know they had tongues! Then I was looking over my shots and lo and behold that one was there.

 

The birds are funny little creatures. Tons of personality. They would sit up there and cock their heads at me, so I like to imagine that one was sticking her tongue out at me!

Funny thing about the tongue shot. I was thinking that cruelty would only be true, if that humming bird's tongue got stuck out because of an overdose of sugar water... ;-)

In the mean time, I've found tons of other hummingbird images, these ones by Fred J. Lord are probably amongst the best on PN?

Yeah, now that is the the stuff. This may be the one I was thinking of, or perhaps one of Fred's other pictures. Wow~! Great stuff. Definitely the best I have seen here. You see that tongue shot he got? Complete with action.

 

My bird's up here going, "But wait, I can do more, just give me a chance!"

 

On the cruelty note I only say that because I seem to recall my grandmother telling me (when I was just a youngster) that it was unhealthy for the sweet little creatures to have those feeders her neighbors had. They'll certainly get addicted and they'll soon forget what their real purpose in life is! ;-)

sweet and wow...those wings are working so fast....what a challenge for you!!!