Ruby Throated Hummingbird

These pictures were taken on August 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 2009 in our back yard. Hummingbirds are tricky little guys to photograph. I've been trying to stop wing motion, get the male where his throat turns out ruby red. These shots were taken at f7.1, ISO varied from 400 to 800 and shutter speed varied from 1/4000 to 1/8000. I was shooting with a flash with a better beamer attached and the flash set at +2. These photos aren't bad but I want ones that are much better and preferrably at a flower.

Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly

These pictures were taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard. I like the shots where he's sitting on top of a Purple Cone Flower.

Lilly flower

These pictures were taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard. I was using a Canon 100-400mm lens, focal length varied from 250 to 400mm, ISO=400, f14 and shutter speed varied from 1/250 to 1/1000.

Hosta flower

This picture was taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard.

Galardia flower

These pictures were taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard.

Goldfinch - Female

These pictures were taken on August 2nd, 2009 in our back yard. I was in our back yard trying to shoot hummingbird when this little guy appeared with a terrific pose. I was shooting into the sun which is a no no, but the pose was so great I had to take the shot.

Summer Azure butterfly

These pictures were taken on August 19th, 2009 in our back yard. Camera setting were f14 at 1/320th of a second, ISO=400 at 400mm. The flower he's sitting on is a Brown Eyed Susan.

Bullfrog

This picture was taken on July 31st, 2009 in our back yard.

Lillys and other flowers

These pictures were taken on July 31st, 2009 in our back yard. I'm trying to develop a technique for taking pictures of flowers. These pictures were taken with a Canon 40D camera with an EOS 100-400mm lens and most shots were at about 400mm. One these shots I used f16 or f22 settings so that I would have a wider depth of field to keep all of the flower in focus. This did cause some of the backgrounds to be a little messy instead of having a completely out of focus, uniform background. I also used a flash with a better beamer attached to concentrate the light on the flower and in a lot of cases, make the background under exposed and uniform. I used a manual exposure and took test shots to gain the effect I was after. Shutter speed for most of the shots was about 1/200th of a second. ISO was set at 400. Some of the shots came out fairly good and I hope you like them. Double click on the images to see the real detail of these flowers.