I went to a bird photography workshop a few weeks ago, and the instructor talked about how to get a stop-motion hummingbird shots, so I had to try. I hung a feeder under a tree in the yard a couple of weeks ago to draw some birds. This is the only guy who seems to have found it so far, but he was very cooperative. The light is a bit harsh, but not bad for a first try.
Post processing...
* Convert from raw
* Crop
* NeatImage
* Clone out second catchlight in eye. I used 3 flashes to stop the motion, so there were multiple catchlights in every shot.
* Multiply layer to tone down the pink
* Soft light layer to add contrast
* High pass filter
* Gradient layer to add slight vignette
* Resize
* Sharpen
* Save for web
Post challenge....
Wow! I expected this to do well, but I never expected to do *this* well! Thanks everyone for your amazing comments!
To address some of the comments...no, 1/500 is not nearly enough to stop the motion on a hummingbird, it was done with high speed flash. The description of what I did is far too long and involved to fit here, and is posted here.
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 138 Avg (all users): 7.8855 Avg (commenters): 9.2353 Avg (participants): 7.7857 Avg (non-participants): 7.9364 Views since voting: 25763 Views during voting: 424 Votes: 166 Comments: 75 Favorites: 50 (view)
triumph for sure !!!
incredible .. i doubt that you could get a better photograph of one of these birds .. stopping those wings and the beautiful colours of his feathers .. the orientation just right .. focus and bokeh .. perfect ... congratulations on an amazing blue ribbon winner .. :)
Way to go Ann. I'm very impressed. This is the sharpest humming Bird shot I've seen. The flash does the trick alright. Looks fantastic in front of the nice soft background. This deserves the very high score it got. Congratulations.
I didn't get enough votes in to make my 10 vote count for you but it was so obviously a ribbon shot that it seems my vote didn't matter anyhow. CONGRATS on a WELL DESERVED BLUE!!!!
Nice stop! I wanted to shot a hummer but the only one who winters over (Annas) would not cooperate with me when the light was decent. Anyway, great shot. Only complaint I would have is that it is a bit dark against the dark background. But that is being picky.
haha let me guess the title is your triumph of capturing this creature eh? this really is very nicely done. i can bet this will ribbon, people love these shots and rightly so with this shot! congrats! /10
Great sharpness, uncomplicated background and unless this bird was in an avary or hovering around all day you might only have had a very short period to get this right, unlike the people that can setup a dripping tap and shoot splashes for hours. Great colours, well exposed, a bit more open space on the left to put the bird a third in from the right, plus, the bird appears be moving from right into space on the left and so this might have improved composition two-fold. The best entry I've seen so far
That's completely amazing. The aperture is amazing - so crisp on such a fast object.
The colors on the body are also just... wow. I love this. It strikes me well.
This is an excellent profile of the the hummingbird and the sharpness and richness of the colors are out standing. When you think of how fast the wings are moving, the capture is even more impressive. There is excellent separation between the subject and the background which makes the bird almost pop out of the image. Well done.
Ummm yeah, it don't get much better than this! The best shot of the challenge, to stop those wings, I mean DPC is gonna go crazy over this shot. Congrats on great colors, great composition, great shutter speed, DAMN!!! Congrats on the blue ribbon!!
If I find the time to vote on enough to make it count for you... you have a 10 from me. Not just because stopping the motion of a hummingbirds wings captures the challenge perfectly. But the shot is also a very good one with very nice tones and colors. The shallow dof really makes this birds beauty stand out and it's cropped very nice too. If it isn't the blue ribbon then it should be.
Triumph!
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