I was going to enter this in the Negative Spaces challenge but decided to enter the Puzzle Macro since both were exclusive member challenges. We have several hummingbird feeders on the east side of the house and each evening there are 5 or six birds fighting for the right to feed. This male Ruby Throated as one of the more aggressive birds. I set up one 1000 watt Novatron light with a softbox about 3 ft from the feeder. The camera was mounted on a Bogen video tripod which allowed me to get about 6 feet off the ground and still provided a lot of stability. I spent about an hour standing in a step ladder, 30 minutes was letting the birds get use to me so when I actually started shooting the only thing that caused them alarm was the flash going off. I have a lot of blank images and a lot more that were blurred since these little guys and gals can move so bloody fast. This little guy finally decided the light and my presence was nothing to be alarmed by so he decided to pose for me. The following are the post processing steps I made.
Converted from RAW
Assigned sRGB Profile
Cropped image
UMS
Curves
Cloned out small imperfection under right wing
Brightness/Contrast
Shadow/Highlight
Neat Image
Selective color to enhance the red feathers
Resized Image to 640x480 96dpi
Sharpen
Sharpen Fade to 45%
Saved to web
Posted to DPC
No hummingbirds were injured or eaten in the making of this image. But they were glad when I finished so they could go back to their daily lives.
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