Dennis Goulet

Photography

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Backyard Hummingbirds

After my trip to Costa Rica I planned to again try my hand at hummingbird photography in my yard.  In past years, many hummingbirds, all Rubythroated, would visit my feeders. Usually one would arrive even before the feeder was up, hovering in front of the window location where it is usually mounted.  Clearly that bird had been here before.  This year was different.  This year, we only had one male most of the time, with a second one showing up occasionally, and we had only three females.  The male dominated the feeder until I set up a second one out of sight of the other.  Now the male guards one feeder, and the three females seem to spend more time chasing each other around the other feeder than eating.

After several weeks of photographing, I haven’t been able to catch the male’s gorget fully lit up.  Most captures that are a side view of the male results in dark, almost black gorget feathers.  There always seems to be a dark patch of red gorget that never lights up.  It’s very difficult to catch the throat lit up, and only seems to happen if the bird is facing the camera, but even then, there’s a patch in the center that doesn’t fully light up.   I’ll have to experiment more with light placement to see if I can get better results.  Up to now the two front lights have been to either side of the flower.  Perhaps I need to place one below and directly in front of the bird.  In the past, I’ve used a camera mounted flash with a BetterBeamer to trigger the other flashes.  That may provide enough direct light, if lack of direct front light is the cause of the dark feathers. 

I’ve been using the Canon 7D with the 500mm f4 Is lens since the birds were very wary of me being nearby.  Now they are more comfortable with me there and I’ve been using the 100-400 zoom lens. .  I can’t rotate my camera for vertical compositions because the built in flash controller of the 7D will not see all the remote flashes if I do so. So I’ve been taking images with less zoom with the intent of cropping for vertical presentation.  The portrait images were taken this way.

There are not many more days to photograph hummingbirds; the males will leave soon and the females a couple of weeks later. 

Costa Rica Photography Trip IV

One of the challenges I set myself was to capture hummingbirds landing.  It’s not a matter of just setting the camera to the highest frame rate and hope for the best, but an anticipation that the landing was going to occur.  With the lens focused on the flower, and framed wide enough to capture the bird as it came in, I’d take my eye away from the viewfinder and look at the larger scene to spot a hummer coming in for a landing.

Since the birds are attracted to the photographic setup using a feeder, the images are predominantly side views of the hummingbird coming in to the feeding tube.  I tried to be aware of the flight of the hummer and attempt to get some images with the birds in different attitudes.

Another technique that Greg Basco suggested is to use a longer flash duration to get a little blur in the fastest moving parts of the hummingbird, the tips of the wings.  In one setup we set the flashes to 1/8 power which froze the image of most of the bird.  These two images were taken at f25 and using multiple flashes as the main light.  In another setup where full sunlight was lighting the bird and background, the camera was set for a longer exposure to let the moving parts blur quite a bit, and the light from the flashes freezing a portion of the bird that did not move much.  This had a lower success rate.  The last three images were take at 1/25 second and f8.  You can see the amount of wing motion in that short amount of time.

Costa Rica Photography Trip III

The planned itinerary offered the opportunity to photograph the Arenal Volcano at night, but this did not happen due to the log hanging clouds that persisted during out two night stay there.  We did get to see some red streaks of red hot rock and lava on the lower slope of the volcano for about two minutes during dinner, and were treated to the grumbling and burping of the volcano throughout the night.  No doubt it would have been spectacular. 

Also on the itinerary was a visit to the Snake Zoo in nearby El Castillo.  Greg Basco’s friend Victor Quesada runs the zoo and his collection of snakes, frogs and lizards are well cared for as evidenced by the condition of the animals and the cleanliness of their enclosures.  Greg and Joe put together a studio set-up with flash, and softboxes for the small critters, and mostly used the distant landscape as a background, although some images used photographed backgrounds..  The branches and flowers used as props were collected on the side of the road before we arrived at Victor’s.  As Joe has a great deal of experience handling venomous snakes, he set up a forest floor scene outside the front entrance, and Victor supplied him with the larger snakes to photograph.  It was a great opportunity to photograph all these animals in a short period of time, and in a safe environment. 

The images are of Red-eyed Tree Frog (2), Masked Tree Frog (2), Rainforest Frog, Eyelash Viper, Fer-de-lance, Neotropical Rattlesnake, and Souther Copperhead.

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Costa Rica Photography Trip II

One of the main purposes of the trip was to photograph hummingbirds using high speed flash set ups.  Joe McDonald has made his photographic career as a specialist in high speed flash photography.  In addition to the two stations that Joe and MaryAnn set up, the local tour provider, photographer Greg Basco, set up another station.  Greg has a very thoughtful approach to photography and is willing to try creative lighting effects in his photography and was willing to share his thoughts, and set ups.  I’ll have more on this topic in a later post.

The hummingbirds shown here are: Green-breasted Mango (male), Long-tailed Hermit, Green-crowned Brilliant (male), White-necked Jacobin, Red-footed Plumeleteer, Crowned Woodnymph, Green-breasted Mango (females).  I’m not certain which species is in the last image; it was interesting that the bees were forcing the hummingbirds back on occasion.

Costa Rica Photography Trip

At the beginning of March, I travelled to Costa Rica with McDonald Wildlife Photogrpahy to photograph volcanoes, hummingbirds and other rain forest creatures.  We had no luck with the volcano as El Ninio was making its impression on the Costa Rican dry season.  The rainy weather did madi it possible to photograph birds most of the day, when they would typically avoid the heat of mid-day.  One of our first stops was at a small nature preserve known for its boat-billed herons, large birds with very large bills.  Other birds visited a feeding station.  Shown here are Boat-billed Herons, a Collared Aracari, White-collared Manakin displaying, and Tent-making Bats.  The tent making bats chewa small section in the middle of the large leaf causing it to fold over, making a tent for them to sleep in.  Also shown are Pasarini’s Tanager, Summer Tanager and a Blue-grey tanager.

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Winter Has Struck Again

This week the weather forcaseters imagined a big storm hiting the Northeast; however, it only brought a few inches of snow.  The windblown snow that did arrive stuck to everything.  The first image is from the side yard, before the turkeys got to tranpling through the snow.  I also drove to some locations in town where streams pass under the road to see if I could find any good scenes to photograph.  Then I went into the back yard to photograph the birds coming to our feeding stations.   The scenic images were taken with my new Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-105mm IS lens.  The the birds were photographed with my Canon 7D,  and the 500mm f4 with a 1.4X converter on it.  I cropped the images after that.  It’s amazing how small a crop can be made and retain the details of the feathers.

Bee Assassin

This Bee Assassin stayed on one of two flowers during a four week period in September.  The first images are in the nymph stage, and gradually transformed into the adult form over the first two weeks.  I visited the flower often to see if the bug would catch something to eat. Near the end of the fourth week I was fortunate to see, and photograph,  the insect eating a bee.

 Assassin bugs get their name from the way they attack their victims, inflicting sharp stabs with their beak.  Their front most legs have powerful muscles to grab and hold their prey while the body fluids are sucked out. The bug pounces on bees and other pollinating insects. After grabbing the prey, the insect thrusts its cutting beak in to the victim’s back, injects an immobilizing digestive agent, then sucks out the body juices.

 For these images I used a Canon 40D camera with a Sigma 150mm macro lens and a Canon MT-24EX twin light.

Turkey and Poults

This spring the male turkeys that visited my yard spent a lot of time displaying.  Well, it must have worked (at least for one).  A female started visiting to feed her nine poults (turkey chicks) at our bird feeders. The little round birds were so cute when they first arrived in early June.  They were very skittish and the mother did not allow any approach, even when we went out to throw some seed on the ground, so the first few photos are from the kitchen window. Normally, the adults stay within six to eight feet when we walk about the yard, especially if we are bringing seed. As the poults got older, the mother did get comfortable with us bringing seed and rarely moved more than six feet out of our way, and would start running for the seed before we’d finished throwing it.  The image of the single poult was taken on August 1, and is just about two months old.

 When young, the poults would occasionally hide under the mother’s belly for warmth or protection.  You can see a couple sets of small legs.  There are five poults under the mother.

Jan and Cemal’s Yard

My friends, Jan and Cemal, have the nicest house with wonderful flower beds both in front yard and back yard.  And no grass to cut.  I’m envious.  They invited Chris and me for a barbecue as well as to photograph the flowers that were at peak blossom.  Except for the fact that it was getting dark and I had to quit, I had a great time.  These images are the result.  They were all taken using a Canon 40D camera with a Sigma 150mm macro lens.

Newport Flower Show

The Newport Flower Show is an annual event of the Newport Horticultural Society held at Rosecliff, one of Newport’s mansions. Held this year on June 26-28, it included two butterfly “houses”, tents really, that featured native butterflies that were to be released at the end of teh show.  Floral arrangements were submitted according to guidelines and the combinations of flowers and greenery is amazing.  Local gardeners display their efforts as cuttings of single blossoms or leaves, as well as entire plants.  The show included a photography competition open to both amateur adn professional photographers.

Photographing inside the exhibition was frustrating in that there were so many people there, even though I went the first day at the opening time.  Macro photography is the best choice as tripods are not allowed, you can get close to the subjects, and using flash can light up areas within blossoms even while hand holding the camera.

Watch for next year’s flower show scheduled for 25-27 June 2010.

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