Category: High Speed Photography
High Speed Photography Pallid Bat Getting a Drink - 4
Just returned from a great scouting trip to Southern Arizona. While there I spent a couple nights photographing bats drinking on the wing from a small pond in the dessert. To create this image an infrared beam was wired up to four high-speed flashes. My tripod mounted camera was set on a twenty second…
High Speed Photography Moth in Flight
Finally got my new Cognisys Insect Rig (More on this in a future post!) for photographing insects in flight all dialed in. It combines all of my favorite things, high-speed flash, a dual laser triggering system, and an electromagnetic shutter that decreases shutter lag to 5 miliseconds! This “teddy bear” moth just makes me…
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
I have had this image in my head for a few years. This was certainly the most challenging hummingbird setup I have ever tried to pull off. It took me three days to get the birds to accept all of the elements required to make this image. Then it was just a matter of getting…
Photo of the Week: Barn Swallows
This shot was taken in the ceiling of a picnic pavilion near my home. I had found this colony of nesting Barn Swallows the year before and made a note to come back and photograph them during nesting season the following year. This shot was created using high-speed flash to freeze the wings of the…
Using High Speed Flash to Photograph Hummingbirds in Flight
My absolute favorite way to photograph hummingbirds is to use high-speed flash to create images of the birds in flight. I like to use high-speed flash because the super-fast burst of light freezes the bird’s wings. Up until recently this type of photography was fairly inaccessible requiring specially made flashes and other equipment. Now however,…
Partnerships
Conservation groups and organizations are always in need of imagery to help get their message out, and for use in their mission to educate the public. One of the things we can do as photographers is to give the gift of our work to these groups. Much can be gained from these associations, even beyond…
Walking on Water
I have to admit that every once in a while I just get lucky. The following photograph of a pair of dancing western grebes is one of those situations. I was photographing waterfowl on a small lake in northern Idaho from my floating blind, when I noticed a single grebe off in the distance. Since I did not have…
Bats in Flight
Sorry I have not been able to do a post for a while. I was gone most of September, on different photography trips. One of which was to an area I really love; Yellowstone and Teton National Parks. I will get some of the images from that trip up in a future post. For today’s…
More High Speed Photography
Basically the way that I am able to freeze such high speed action is by using a special electronic flash that puts out an incredibly short burst of light (between 1/15,000 to 1/50,000 of a sec.). This brief pulse of light is what freezes the subject. Most commercially available flash systems produce a seemingly fast…
High Speed Flash Photography Hummingbirds in Flight
After my trip to the Galapagos Islands, we took a few extra days and went into the cloud forests of Ecuador, mainly to photograph hummingbirds. Ecuador has 130 of the world’s 330 species of hummingbirds. I visited many of the well known lodges in the Mindo valley and ended up photographing about a dozen different…