
Originally Posted by
Greg Basco
Christopher, your background does indeed look much better with the frog from Peru (what a cool frog!) than with the hummingbird. It's basically the artificial tone that I think causes the issue with the hummingbird picture.
I do normally use prints of out of focus vegetation for backgrounds for multi-flash hummingbirds but I also have used painted backgrounds, and they can work quite well too. Regarding the flash settings, I am a bit curious about why you used full-power. Though it's actually the positioning of the flashes that matters rather than the power setting in terms of achieving natural looking lighting, a lower power setting would allow you to freeze the wings if you were going for these guys in flight. Looking at the catchlights in the hummingbird's eye, it looks like the main flashes were placed in a fairly frontal fashion. I would suggest moving them more off axis for a more natural looking lighting scheme that gives a little more shadow and texture.
Hummingbird photography is a blast and is quite addictive so I hope you keep playing around and trying different settings and lighting variations.
Cheers,
Greg Basco