Hello! I’m back with another image from my semi-daily excursions through the camera eye. I decided I needed more practice in capturing things like this. Hummingbirds present their own special challenge to photographers. Not only do you need to make sure your exposure is set correctly, but also focus using a telephoto lens (you can’t use a regular zoom lens on these birds and expect to get a close shot!), be extra-steady with that lens, keep focusing and be quick enough with the shutter before they can fly away from the frame. This is something I hope to be better at with practice. Fortunately, Arizona has no shortage of these wondrous birds.

Here are the settings, in case you need to know:

Shutter: 1/640 sec.
Aperture: ƒ5.6
ISO: 400 (needed for a fast shutter speed)
Focal length: 255mm

Here’s another shot I did over a year ago, and I was very proud of it, for obvious reasons…

Looking back, I’m surprised I used an aperture of ƒ9.0, as you typically need a larger aperture for more light, thus a faster shutter. However, my use of ISO800 took care of that problem, though it risked some noise problems. You can check out both photos, in greater detail, by clicking on them and going to their Flickr pages.

That’s all I have for now. If you like my work, or have some criticism to give, feel free to comment and/or drop me a line. Thanks!

I’m a little behind on featured photos lately. I’ve been shooting more often these last few weeks, so I have some steady material to present to my viewers here.

Last weekend, I took a drive to Florence, AZ. to check out the Warrior Dash, a race for St. Jude’s Charities. I love making action and event photos, and I’m thrilled when I can get the chance to preserve fluid, moving moments and people having fun. Action shots are hard to do correctly; it’s a challenge not just for focus, composition and light (what I call the triad of Photography), but also timing. Sure, one could always put the camera in continuous shot mode and mash down the shutter button, but I don’t like wasting shots. Many of the shots in my Flickr set of the event were done in one shot, with the few exceptions like the photo above. That one took several shots to get right, but I’m happy with the way it captured the energy and enthusiasm of the runners. Below are some more shots of the day…

Go ahead and check out the rest of the photos on my Flickr set of the event. This looked like a lot of fun and maybe, just maybe, I’ll go next year to participate, and not just shoot photos!

This photo was taken at Friendship Park in Avondale, AZ, a favorite place of mine to observe and take pictures of all sorts of birds. I caught this shot almost by accident, because I was taking shots of the other fowl swimming in the water. I simply saw her out of the corner of my eye, coming in for a landing, so I adjusted my view and got her in one shot!

Exposure: 1/800
Aperture: ƒ/5.6
ISO: 400
Focal length: 300mm

I had to use a higher ISO due to the telephoto lens and to make sure I didn’t get much motion blurring from the birds or camera shake from myself.

The full set from the park is at my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisw357/sets/72157629869487657/

Thommen is always a good photography subject for me to use, and I use him often for practice. Anyone who has pets knows that they’re definitely hard subjects to take a picture of; they’re always moving around! The evening I took this, I was practicing my flash photography, which is always a tricky thing to master. Flash, when not done exactly right, tends to make most images blown out in some areas, underexposed in others. Photographers that I speak to like to call those kinds of pics “party shots”. I used my Canon speedlite with some moderate ordinary overhead room lighting.

Comments are always welcome!

Some people may have been wondering what happened to EI in almost two months since I posted the last Photo Of The Week. Well, it’s nothing to be too concerned about, really. I started a new job, since photography doesn’t exactly pay bills like one might expect unless steady work comes in. I’m on an afternoon/evening shift, which took some surprising amount of getting used to, despite there being only an 8 hour’s difference.

Unfortunately, this means that my event photography is very limited to just weekend shoots. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem since most events are typically weekend affairs. I’m still available to do shoots for anyone in the Phoenix area. Unfortunately, this cut off any events I used to do for Yelp.com, which mostly happened during the work week. I’m still determined to get back on my feet in this regard, so I’ll be looking and asking around for those weekend events very soon.

As for this site, since I’m finally getting used to my new schedule, I’ll be resuming work on importing more photo content into the galleries… starting with the wedding pictures I took about a month ago. You may notice the new Weddings tab on the header bar. I have my proudest moment in photographing a happy couple, Brian and Lucy, during the happiest moment of their lives; the current only picture there is the first of over fifty photos I plan to import into the gallery this month (I may add more sooner than I think!). I’ll be soon writing a blog post about the event. Stay tuned!

Thank you for being patient with me and EI. If you need photo work, and you’re in the Phoenix area, drop me a line in the contact form here! I’ll be happy to work with you. Cheers!

–Chris W.