A Game of Patience

Camera: Nikon D200
Lens: Nikon 70 – 300 VR
f/9.5 at 1/250
ISO 100

This little guy loved the flowers around the small resort where we stayed in Mexico. He would arrive, feed on the flowers for a few minutes and then disappear. I decided to try to get a photograph so I kept my camera with me and set with what I hoped was a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action of the bird and with a small enough aperture to give me some depth-of-field.

I failed miserably at first. He would land on a flower that was nowhere near and if I approached it would fly away. After some observation I realized there were several flowers it liked best and always stopped at. So I sat myself in a chair pre-focused on one of those flowers and waited. It was a game of patience.

Finally some success! This strategy allowed me to get at least a few decent shots of this and one other hummingbird. This is probably my favourite. I like the fact that the shutter was fast enough to freeze the action of the bird but slow enough to allow the wings to blur.