One of the highlighted images on my website is a picture of Colibri Thalassinus (otherwise knows as the Green Violet-ear Hummingbird), which was taken on the island of Cayo Las Brujas in Cuba a few years ago. Many people have said how much they like the picture but they often ask: “how did you do that?” I think they mean: “how did you get it to stand still for long enough to take the picture in the first place?” As far as I know there are only two ways to get a hummingbird to stand still: taxidermy and a fast shutter speed. Since I prefer my hummingbirds to be alive I chose the latter option!
Of course, choosing a fast shutter speed is only the start (for the technically minded I put my camera on shutter speed priority and selected a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second, but I’ve also seen other photographers achieve excellent results at 1/320). The extra ingredients needed are a hint of madness, patience, luck and lightning fast reflexes. I say madness because while everyone else on the Cayo did the sensible thing and had a siesta at 3 pm, I decided to venture out in the steaming humidity to a nearby area where I had seen a few hummingbirds flitting around earlier in the day. So there I was patiently hand holding my heavy (and getting heavier) 100-400 mm lens for about half an hour. Every now and then one of the little fellows would dart over for a sip of nectar but never staying around (or standing still) for more than a few seconds, so I ended up with a few pictures like this:
Hummingbird Flying Away, Cayo Las Brujas, Cuba
Hummingbird Obscured, Cayo Las Brujas, Cuba
Nice — if you don’t mind the fact that you can’t really see the bird …
I refused to give up, though, and despite the lens by now weighing a ton I persevered for long enough to get lucky: eventually I managed to catch one in profile, against a blurred aqua Caribbean background.
Hummingbird, Cayo Las Brujas, Cuba
A second later and he was gone, perhaps not to return for another 5 minutes or the rest of the day …
Leave a reply