20250507-IMGP5453-Ruby-throated Hummingbird Male-wmRW.jpg

This photo I am submitting is one of my favorites because the brilliant, iridescent red-orange neck feathers stand out dramatically, resting above a white belly and against the dark green tones of the male Ruby-throated Hummingbird and its background.

Bird photography is challenging in general because most birds are tiny and move quickly. Of all birds, hummingbirds are the most challenging, thanks to their ability to zip in any direction at speeds of 30-40 MPH - even upside down. They can pull 9 Gs in a sudden dive and achieve an instantaneous acceleration of 42.3 meters per second squared. Only when I'm lucky can I photograph a hummingbird in flight. And then, perhaps one in a thousand of these lucky images is presentable.

This bird was not in flight. I captured this image as the hummingbird rested between sips from the feeder I maintain near my back door. I took the photo right after I got home from work at 5:30. (The lesson for me is to take every opportunity to photograph birds.)

The photo I am entering is among the first I took with my new (to me) Pentax K-3 Mark III and Pentax DFA 150-450mm lens. I mounted the camera and lens on a tripod approximately 10 feet from the feeder, setting the shutter speed to 1/5000 to freeze a hummer's wings, and the aperture to f/8 to ensure sufficient depth of field for capturing the entire bird. The resulting ISO was 12800. The lighting is all natural, with the late evening sun catching the bird's shoulder from the left. I zoomed the lens to 450mm, which on the K-3's APS-C sensor became the equivalent of 695mm.

My hummingbird feeder has six flowers from which hummingbirds may drink. I covered five of them with painter's tape so the hummingbirds would land and drink where I wished.

I took over a hundred photos of several hummingbirds at the feeder. Later that evening, as I zoomed into the RAW image of this photo on my monitor, I imagined a close-up of the bird's head might be possible.

So, instead of leaving the photo as taken, I cropped it to a square format of 3063x3063, creating this headshot with 9.4 megapixels. I used DxO PhotoLab to adjust the exposure and sharpness, and I used Pixelmator Pro's automatic white balance feature.