Happy New Year from HogbatsPhotography.com and the snowy Wind River Canyon, Wyoming.  It's beautiful here this time of the year, like that frozen animated movie, but there's nothing exciting to chase around when it's twenty below zero!  So when it's very cold and the snow is deep, like it is now, I like to go over the digital files from the previous summer shoots; you never know what you'll find that you missed. 

     During hummingbird season I may shoot hundreds of frames a day, for days on end when the action gets crazy around here, and some photographs get lost in all the excitement.  I don't usually find anything that's newsworthy or anything, so I just file RAW pics into their respective place, and work on the odd photo that may be of interest; but a recent snow-day I found pictures that I cannot believe were missed.  These thirty odd photographs were of a Broad-tailed Hummingbird Baby; the first Broad-tailed Hummingbird born in the Wind River Canyon!  

     I knew right away why these photographs were dismissed in all the hummingbird excitement.  Broad-tailed Hummingbird, Baby (m) - Wind River Canyon, WyomingThe first Broad-tailed Hummingbird born in Wind River Canyon, Wyoming. This was the first Broad-tailed Hummingbird born in the Wind River Canyon, but it was just after six in the morning, and we have no light in this hole-in-the-ground: And I will never use flash on a wild animal!  The digital files were dark and yucky (an old darkroom expression) and were easy to dismiss during a late (August the 8th) summer day.  You see, to a Hummingbird in the canyon, the middle of August is the time to scram out of Wyoming....it's getting cold at night around here; maybe mid-40's.  So the light was lousy, and I had other much more pressing pictures to work on.

     With more than two feet of snow on the ground, it seemed like a good time to work on some special hummingbird photographs.  And work I did, over and over with different software and methods to try and make something magical from this gook.  I've worked for days on end to try and get this baby hummingbird to really shine from a dull penny.  I tried a one-button HDR, and I really didn't like that look.  I sharpened this and that, with this and that, and messed with the white balance, and contrast, and whites, and blacks, and saturation, and Adobe Lightroom to give this one frame the finished look.  

     The finished picture, of the first Broad-tailed Hummingbird baby, isn't up to my finicky standards; but this picture is very important, as it documents a wildlife first here in the canyon.  Now there are four species of hummingbirds that nest in the Wind River Canyon, and have been successful----when we moved out here nearly sixteen years ago, there were only two species of hummingbirds breeding here.  And I'm very happy about this, but why are they here when books tell me that they aren't?

     My quickest answer to this question is always this----they have no other place to go, and we have in the canyon the food they need to build strong baby hummingbirds; lots of little bugs.  You see, all babies need a protein source, and bugs are a good one.  It's safe here and we have good junipers to nest in; but the bird books will tell you that the hummingbirds you see on my website are not here.  The hummingbirds obviously don't know that............

     This baby Broad-tailed Hummingbird male has "nest marks" on it's breast feathers, it's so new to the world.  He was photographed with the wonderful Canon 7D, their 300mm f/4L lens, and one of the new series three 1.4 extenders.  This long white rig was propped up on my bedroom windowsill at six in the morning last August the 8th....I should have put some cloths on and went outside.

writing, photography, digital darkroom and complaining by - Michael John Balog