First Photo Post - Costas Hummingbird

Hello to everyone. I'm excited about participating on this forum as I begin my journey to becoming an informed, accomplished wildlife and landscape photographer. This may not be the best shot posted but I'm excited by it. I was visiting the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden on Christmas Eve and sat down to try for a close up on one of the few blooming flowers in the herb garden when this Costas Hummingbird zoomed in to feed. Harsh mid-day full sun, shot at f2.5 with a 50MM macro lens, ISO 200, 1/4000 in aperature priority. The background is more cluttered than I'd like as there were still luminaries everywhere!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2075/...1edf6d.jpg?v=0

Let me know what you think.

Hi Terry,

I tried to e-mail you but it came back as undeliverable.. Thanks for joining us. I wanted to let you know that I moved your image to the eager to learn gallery where you will receive lots of help. Best of luck at getting better. We are here to help.

As for the image, I like the flowers and the wing position. You need to frame the image to ensure that the subject is completely within the frame with a nice border around it as well. In addition, the shorter focal length lenses show much more background than the longer lenses as a result of their very wide angles of view...

later and love, artie

ps: Please check your e-mail address in your User Control Panel. Thanks.

Welcome Terry! You have a beautiful subject here in both the hummingbird and the flower. I really like the green/red portion of the upper background that shows me that there were lots of other red flowers nearby. I think if you had gotten just a bit lower when you took this shot, you could have eliminated the lower portion of the background that appears to be a sidewalk. A slight move to the right might have also removed the stray branch that enters in the lower-left. Lots of potential in a location like this!

Hi Terry!

Sounds like you are hooked now! The bird is a beauty and the color of the flowers are really nice against the dark background. You have good advice already here, I would just add to try and be aware of stray branches in your focal plane so you can move a step either way and try to avoid them in your image. Boy it's not easy to think off all that stuff above and at the same time try and make your image. However it becomes second nature after working at it and you sound like you have the enthusiasm...so go with it and bring us more!!

Hi Terry - While all the points made above are certainly valid, I'd just like to add that there are folks around who are impressed and inspired by ~any~ reasonable capture of a hummingbird, especially if that wasn't what you originally set out to do! Great heads-up shooting!