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John Guastella
03-03-2011, 05:30 PM
Taken at the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, Irvine, CA. This Anna's Hummingbird male has established his territory on the edge of one of the hiking trails in this sanctuary, making it easy to get some close-up shots. I waited for him to turn towards me so that the light was reflected from his gorget. Based on established HA criteria, there may be a bit too much head turn, but that's what allowed me to capture nearly the entire gorget illuminated by the sun. I do wish I had stopped down more to get the entire bill in focus.

I cloned out some OOF branches. There were some distracting blown highlights on the side of the head which I dealt with by cloning in some feathers.

Canon 7D with the Canon 500mm f/4 lens + Canon 1.4 Extender. Manual, f/8 at 1/250sec. ISO 400. Tripod with Wimberley head.

Thanks for looking - all C&C welcome,

John
D. Robert Franz
03-03-2011, 05:59 PM
I think this is well done.. The DOF is not a big problem for me.. Looks just a tad bright overall. Maybe a bit more saturation especially in the sky would help. Nice getting the gorget lit up. Good effort.
Sidharth Kodikal
03-03-2011, 06:01 PM
Such lovely iridescent colors, John! It's always nice to see a hummer perched for a change. Sharp with nice feather details. Wish for more DOF like you noted. Some possible PP artifact bottom left by your sig and possibly on the branch that could be easily fixed. Love the flared gorget. TFS.
James Salywoda
03-04-2011, 10:31 AM
Beautiful shot John. Great colors and detail.
Greg Basco
03-04-2011, 12:14 PM
John, nicely done. The sharpness is nice and where it counts. I could see trying out Dale's suggestions for PP to improve this even more.

Cheers,
Greg Basco
Arsdel Fluesmeier
03-04-2011, 07:46 PM
Great shot and great detail. Maybe a little darker sky.
John Guastella
03-04-2011, 09:04 PM
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I did try to get the sky looking more natural (it is often blown-out on these hummingbird shots because the bird is so much darker), but didn't quite get it right.

Sidh, thanks for pointing out those PP artifacts - not sure how they got by me...

Best regards,

John