Concerning Hummingbirds
I saw my very first hummingbird, before school age, in my grandparents beautiful backyard in Cleveland. They sent me on little vacations where I learned to explore Mother Nature, and those amazing tiny birds captured this little boy's imagination. The hummingbirds flew at impossible speeds considering their size, and flashed around grandma's yard like small pieces of colored foil. Needing to sit quiet for hours to glimpse one was difficult for a boy, but they were incredible, and unlike anything I'd ever seen. So, I sat near the big cherry tree behind the big brick house, and would wait for the few dazzling moments they fed on grandma's exotic flowers. These childhood memories are what started me on my quest to try and photograph hummingbirds; it took nearly half a century for the technology to catch up with my artistic dreams. Now, in the middle of winter, I plan next for summer's arrival of our breeding hummingbirds in the Wind River Canyon.
Sixteen years ago, while painting the trim on our cabin, I saw my very first Rufous Hummingbird in Wyoming. In the back of my mind I knew they were in this area, but as a busy motel owner I never had the time to notice anything but fifteen hours a day of summer work. Ten feet high on a ladder with a wet brush in my hands, I steadied myself and watched a male Rufous Hummingbird zipping around the canyon; I put up a nectar feeder. The action that ensued was so immediate it was unreal; I had barely turned around when a hummingbird was at our hummingbird feeder, so I bought another hummingbird feeder. Now, I put up anywhere between four and six of the nectar feeders, depending on the hummingbird traffic.
The Rufous Hummingbird has been called pugnacious, which I suppose is the most apt one word description. Their color is that of the tiger, which is also very appropriate. They will take over your nectar flowers or hummingbird feeder, and defend their food source with tiger-like aggressiveness; while mowing the grass I had a male try and chase me out of the immediate vicinity. I also learned just as quickly we had Calliope Hummingbirds, too! Calliope Hummingbirds are the smallest bird in North America, and not as aggressive as the Rufous, which makes them difficult photographic subjects.
Now, I'm a full-time starving artist with a website I built and manage myself. My website, HogbatsPhotography.com debuted in June, and yes it's a lot of work. What I like to teach folks about websites is this----"A website is like an iceberg, what you see is only 10%." But at this moment I'm planning a blind to help me video and photograph my hummingbirds next summer.
The two pictures, in this week's blog, are photographs I had seen in my mind's eye years before I even pushed the shutter button. This is how I'd wanted my hummingbirds to be seen, this is what I'd visualized, and it took many years to get these magical frames of light. They were both shot with the Canon 7D and the L-series 300mm lens, they were worked in the affordable Adobe Lightroom 5 software, but first worked and converted in the "free" software supplied by Canon as a tiff file.
And that's all there's to it to photographing hummingbirds; a half century of learning about art, nature, and photography, thousands of dollars in technology, a learning curve that will drive you to scream, the patience of Job in the hot sun, and a wife that's a very supportive fan, and always keeping your camera ready.
