It's October and here in southwest Alabama, it's not feeling like anything but mid-summer. It's still hot and sticky but we've had a couple of nice, cool days hinting at a change in season.
I recently took my daily, early morning walk with my camera. I had my 100-400mm lens on in hopes of getting some bees, birds or squirrels. I was headed to the Methodist church parking lot where, in years past, I've found daisies and bees. I was disappointed to only find two or three daisies and none of them were particularly pretty. They had no bees either. Across the sidewalk there was a lot of cardinal spear and the sprinkler system had been on overnight. As you know, I'm always drawn to anything with water droplets. As I stood getting a few shots of the wet cardinal spear I just happened to notice a tiny hummingbird swooping in and out. I looked closer and saw a second one. Upon closer inspection I saw there were several and I had hit the jackpot!!! The sun was high enough that the light was contrasty but as it turned out, the extra bright light enabled me to get the sharp shots. I used a fairly high ISO coupled with aperture priority to get a very fast shutter speed. The hummers were wary of me at the beginning but eventually allowed me to stand about 5 feet away from a couple of them. Some shots I couldn't take because they were too close and I couldn't focus. My minimum focusing distance with that lens is 4.9'. That's pretty brave of those little guys! Other shots were taken from 20-30 feet away. I stood there for about 45 minutes and since then have gone back three other days. I've found that if it's not extremely bright none of my shots are sharp even with a high ISO and continuous shooting.
This is the first time I've gotten really good photos of hummingbirds so I was very happy with these. I hope you enjoy them.
