Hummingbird Portrait I

It's one of my favorite times of the year again!  Hummingbird season!  They've arrived here in Jackson, Tennessee.  We have the young male ruby red throated hummingbird pictured above who is already guarding our feeder.  

In less than one week, I've taken over 4,000 hummingbird photos with the Sigma lens.  This is my first year using this lens and I am so happy with it.  I still get as close as I can to the birds, which when you have one like "Bossy" (above), it's easy to do, as he's not scared of anything.

Several months ago, I made a blog post with 10 Tips for Photographing Birds.  I have another tip to add - specific to hummingbirds.  Find a branch or twig lying around with no leaves on it, and tape it to your feeder pole or somewhere nearby your feeders.  Position the branch low enough where you can take a photo straight on when the birds land on the branch.  For hummingbirds, it doesn't have to be a very big branch.  I duct taped this one to my feeder pole with the branches pointed the opposite direction from the feeder.  Within minutes, Bossy was landing on it and posing for me.  

Here's a photo I just finished of one of the little girls coming up to get a drink. I've titled it "A Taste of Nectar".

A Taste of Nectar

I was standing in the same position with this photo as I was the last - very close to the feeder.  And yes, she was drinking out of a feeder when I took this shot.  For art purposes - to create a piece of work someone would like to hang on their wall - I finished off the photo by giving her a Hibiscus flower to drink from.  :)

For the above photo, I used one of my new free textures titled Vintage Purple Painted Canvas.  I layered the painted canvas on three times, using different opacity and blending modes for each to create this art.    If you like to use textures in your photography work, you are welcome to click the link to download this texture for free here on my website.  There are also 67 more free textures here for you to download!

I'd be very grateful if you'd share the above photos with your friends and family!  Just click the small images below and beneath each picture are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google + and more ways to share!

 

See more hummingbird art on Fine Art America.