My mantra for shooting hummingbirds: if you want to shoot hummers, go to where the hummers are. These are White-necked Jacobins, one of the most successful hummingbird species. They are found from southern Mexico to Chile, often in great numbers. Aggressive, they often dominate flower gardens or feeders. Difficult to photograph because of the bright whites and dark blues of the males, they at least give a photographer lots of opportunities. This trio is at a Heliconia flower-one of the most important flowers for hummers in the Neo-tropics. The boat shaped blossoms give the hummers nectar, water (that collects from the dew at night) and insects that are attracted to the nectar and drown in the water).
White-necked Jacobin
Country Costa Rica
Location Dave and Dave's, formerly Nature Pavillion
Gender Both Male and Female (in same image)
Age Adult
Activity BIF (Bird in Flight), Feeding in the Wild
- Created Timestamp01/01/1970 00:00:00
Great shot!! How did you get all the hummers in focus? Well done.
Thank you. This flower (which had sugar water placed into the blossoms) was only about 5-7′ away so even though I backed off on the zoom to 250 mm there was little DOF. This picture was taken from a sequence of over 100 shots that were taken in about 6-7 seconds. This was the only one that all 3 birds were in reasonable focus. I applied Topaz De Noise AI in the Standard mode on Auto to help sharpen them; there was little noise in the original shot.
Shooting parameters were ISO 3200, SS 1/1600, f/7.1
I’m a huge hummingbird fan and love your shot.
Me too. Thank you for the kudos. Hummers are challenging, but often they at least give you lots of opportunities.