I’m home from Madera Canyon. I am thrilled with my accomplishments there. On the first day, I captured more photographs that met my expectations than I captured during the entire week last year. Madera Canyon is an incredible place. I am starting to grasp the nuances of this challenge of photographing hummingbirds. I haven’t come close to mastering it yet but I feel as if I now have a much better understanding and can move forward and work on fine-tuning my technique instead of continuing to make the same mistakes.
I took these photographs on Friday morning, our last day in the Canyon. They are my best from the last morning but certainly not my best from the trip. The last morning was frustrating for me. The birds were not coming to the feeders in the area outside of my cabin. Time was so long between visit that I lost concentration and wasn’t always ready when they did come so I missed many shots. Then, I struggled with exposure when the sun came out and specular highlights were so distracting in the background. I moved my rig to avoid the specular highlights the background and that helped but lighter areas in the background caused the subject to darken even with flash. Improving my understanding of flash and ambient light exposure together is something I will be working on now that I’m home for a few weeks.
