What Chuck Does

Weekend Update: Birds, Tennis and Pasadena Night Scenary

Since taking reception of my D3, I’ve revisited and expanded my favorite photographic subjects. I’ve always been fascinated with hummingbirds and have dedicated a lot of time learning about them and trying to capture them on camera. I’ve recently rehung feeders outside my house and spent some time trying to capture them on camera again. With the high ISO capabilities of the D3 and the extra megapixels, I’ve been able to get shots of these birds with the level of sharpness and detail that I’ve never before seen.

Skittish bird

Departure

When the sun sets on the birds (read: not enough ambient light), I shift my focus to indoor/flash photography and practice my understanding of strobe lighting. Fortunately, I had a subject (my brother) and he was willing to play the part. I experimented with putting the umbrella close and getting some shadows on his face while also putting a strobe behind him for a halo effect around him. Here are the results:

Will

My buddy Charlie dropped by yesterday to play some tennis with me. Before we started playing I mentioned that I wanted to drive through Pasadena and take some pictures of the night scenary. Well one comment was all it took to get him exited about shooting some long exposures in Pasadena.

An hour later we were at all my favorite spots shooting City Hall, churches, and the best acoustic guitarist I’ve every heard live.

City Hall

Lonely guitarist

Sunday I revisited the hummingbirds but because of the heat or for whatever reason, I had a harder time getting them to show up and/or take pictures of them. I believe that when it’s hot during the day, they push their feeding time later into the day. That sucks for me because the sun sets at the same time regardless of whether or not it was a hot day. I only got 2-3 pictures and none of them were any good. Part of the difficulty is that the “resident bird” is skittish and even though it’s a pretty male Anna’s hummingbird, he doesn’t much want to pose won’t hold still during shutter releases. Luckily the competitors to the feeder came around and I got a few shots of them.

As usual, you can click on the red icon on the right to see the rest of my pics and in full-size. I haven’t yet finished post-processing all the pics I’ve taken so I’ll slowly take care of them throughout the week. Hopefully I’ll have time. But the wedding is coming!!!