Organ Hummers

So after a couple glasses of wine with our sister and brother-in-law, Katie and Joe Organ, we decided upon the title of this blog entry. The hummingbirds hanging out in front of their beautiful Mendon, NY home were too pretty to resist. So I set up a tripod and waited until the sun went down so I could use a couple flashes to freeze their wings, which beat at 50 - 80 times per second. Click on the pics to see larger versions.

One light in the garden

Nothing better than having family with us over a holiday weekend so we were pretty psyched when Stacey, Juan, and Chris surprised us with a visit from D.C. over the fourth. Stace and I have learned that dragging our cameras and lighting gear out for long periods of time is greatly frowned upon when "family" time is so rare, but we did get to sneak in a few pictures. We were up at 6:30am on Saturday to take some yoga pics (did I mention that Stacey is also a popular yoga teacher in D.C.?). Simple setup; just a softbox to the left of the camera and natural daylight. The other pics used a technique I've been anxious to try; one speedlight mounted high on a lightstand aimed at the windows/glass door on the back of the house. The light is outside, about 20 feet away in the garden behind our house. It strikes the window grilles and indoor plant, creating interesting shadow patterns on Stacey and the wall behind her. The intensity of the shadows is adjusted by changing the camera shutter speed.