A humming bird feeding at my parents house.OK, so when I was visiting my parents in Pittsburgh (well, near Pittsburgh, about an hour’s drive, out in the country with lots of cows) I was catching up on a lot of sleep lost during my TEFL training in Wasington, DC. So I would go out on their beautiful covered back porch and lay down on this comfy reclining lounge chair and relax by going into a half-coma/sleep state. I kept waking up to this buzzing sound every few minutes. Then I noticed the humming bird feeder and all these little humming birds darting in and out to get their sugar high. I had the urge to take pictures but didn’t want to disturb the warm comfort of my present seat. I set up my tripod and put on the remote shutter release setup for the camera. I put the 80-400mm lens on the camera and the SB-800 flash on the hot shoe and waited, in my comfy chair of course. The problem I then had was waking up in time to press the button on the remote. Is this a pathetic story or what? The height of laziness! In the end I only managed to wake up and snap a few shots. Those buggers were fast, and the strobe pretty much freaked them out so they would sit in the tree across the way and stare at the feeder, scared to death of the bright light awaiting them. As you can see, the strobe only syncs up to 1/250s, not nearly enough speed to freeze those wings. I would have loved to take more time shooting birds at my parents, maybe next time.
