One of the difficulties of taking pictures of birds is that the camera's autofocus often chooses to focus on the foliage surrounding the bird instead of the bird itself. It's a problem with no great solution, but once in a while you solve it by just getting lucky.
Today's photos are a lucky triptych that shows a hummingbird coming in for a landing on a nearby stem. The hummingbird was right in between two stems dead center in the viewfinder, so the autofocus did its job perfectly. The shutter was set to 1/16000th of a second, so the wings are perfectly stopped. All in all, an excellent look at the flying style of nature's cutest little bird.
Perfect two-point landing!
Gorgeous pix, and gorgeous birds. Anybody know what kind of hummer this little guy is? (I'm an easterner. We only have one kind!)
First-year male (i.e., born earlier this year), almost certainly Allen's Hummingbird, but at this age can't be distinguished from Rufous Hummingbird except through a close in-hand examination of the tail feathers. (Rufous would be very rare in May in Irvine.)
Gotcha. Thanks!
Those shots are a miracle, the way the foot is extended for landing, and then landing.
Love these so much! Thank you!
Colors are great.
Is there an in-camera adjustment for focus priority?
The Olynpus OM-D E-M1X has bird detect autofocus. Just sayin'....
"once in a while you solve it by just getting lucky."
I used to collect photo magazines back in high school in the 70's and pore over the work, each one of which had an informative caption including film type and speed, shutter speed, and f /stop. I thought I had to learn how to make split second decisions on all those things if I wanted to be a good photographer.
Here's the dirty secret of professional photography. It has ALWAYS been a game of shooting a ton of images and cherry picking the good ones. The only difference is that in the film days, that was an expensive thing to do and only pros could afford it. Now everyone can. Digital allows us all to exploit luck.
Great pix Kevin. What a cute little dude.
under the red in tooth and claw....animals without teeth or claws...
CNet has an article on spiders eating snakes with a link to another article about preying mantises eating hummingbirds brains. (Prey, pray...potato, potatoe)
https://www.cnet.com/news/spiders-are-eating-snakes-all-over-the-world-and-its-kind-of-gruesome/
Like everything about these - subject, colors, light - sublime. Wish there were a gallery, virtual or not, of Kevin's best work