Hummingbird… A Frozen Moment

"I shot this in Whiteriver, AZ on the White Mountain Apache Reservation, just before sunset on July 28, 2013. I shot it at 1/160 at F/9, 100 ISO. I took the ambient down to black and then used 4 speedlights, set at very low power (1/32), to provide a very short flash duration which “froze” the wings in mid-flight. Two speedlights were in front, slightly above, at 45 degree angles... one right and one left. Another light was above and slightly behind the subject. The last light was directly below the subject. All of the lights were about 3 ft from the subject. I used a bird feeder to attract the birds and then replaced it with flowers and combined them in post... pretty easy since the background is all black. Sometimes you get lucky and the birds actually come to the flower, but this one was a composite. It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of these little birds until you see a still capture of them."- Mike Mahoney

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