I’m calling it practice but to me, it’s the kind of practice that is pure joy. I love to photograph Hummingbirds. I’m preparing for a trip to Costa Rica in a couple of weeks and our target is Hummingbirds. Costa Rica has more than fifty species of Hummingbirds. Last year, at Rancho Naturalista in the mountains in the heart of Costa Rica, I photographed nine different species, all but one right from the deck at the lodge. We use dual flashes (Profoto A10’s) as a way to bring out the color in the hummingbirds, not for exposure. I’ve used a flash rig for the past several years at Madera Canyon in Arizona as well as last year in Costa Rica but using it requires practice if you don’t use it regularly so I’m taking a refresher. I photograph the Anna’s Hummingbirds in my garden all the time but I don’t use the flash rig all the time. Practicing with the flash, I’m really seeing how the flash brings out subtle nuances in the color of the bird’s feathers, even in the female Anna’s like this one. I also spent time making sure the background was good by moving the Hummingbird feeders around in the tree so that when the hummers were at the feeders, the area behind them was green and not the beige fence that is behind the tree. When I started practicing a few days ago, all of my backgrounds were fence-colored. It finally dawned on me that since the tree is currently devoid of leaves, the fence becomes the background instead of the green from the tree’s foliage. Once I moved the feeders closer to the foliage of other nearby plants, it made a huge difference in the background and I like the result.