Post Irony

Our two hummers have been coming to the feeder each evening so I set out to shoot them again. I like the background better than my first try, but the angle wasn’t as good. Most of the shots got the back of the birds and, while interesting, you need to be able to see the eye and beak, I think. I’m thinking I’ll move the feeder to a new spot to try to get better angles. Strobist info: Vivitar 285HV at about 120 degrees on camera right at 1/4 power and SB26 about 45 degrees on camera right at 1/4 power.

I found this guy’s tutorial on the Internets and thought to myself, “This might work for the jar o corks.” So I totally ripped him off. Surely he expects people to straight copy him if he puts all the details on the Internets, right?

Fooling around with my flashes, I tacked a white sheet to the wall in the garage and fired one flash into the background to overexpose it and the other flash into the silver umbrella on camera right to light Gina. This what they call lighting on two planes. The flashes light specific parts of the image separately without affecting each other. The straight headshots weren’t that interesting other than to prove the light setup worked. So we came up with the flying-hair idea.

We did get one regular-type shot I thought was pretty good. Gina had just about run out of patience with me when I snapped this one.

Strobist info: SB26 at 1/2 power into the background and Vivitar 285HV at 1/4 power into a silver umbrella at camera right just out of the frame.

Since we got the sugar water mix right on the hummingbird feeder, these little guys have been visiting the back yard every night. I set up my two flashes on opposite sides of the feeder set to 1/4 power. I put the camera on a tripod at about 90 degrees to the flashes. Setting the camera to shoot with the remote, I sat on the patio and waited for the hummers to show up. One did. I cranked up the shutter speed to darken the ambient light so that most of the lighting came from the flashes. The flash duration at such a low power is very short, meaning it can stop very fast action, such as a hummingbird’s beating wings. At least that was the theory. And it worked for the most part. I’m not too happy with the background or the angle of the flashes, so I’m going to try again tomorrow.