Dispatches from Panama: Multi-flash

What is it about hummingbirds that brings the world to a standstill? Consider the distractions we face, the mental lent we suffocate from, the unceasing noise of the civilized world, the incessant technological overwhelm filled with likes, follows, pings, buzzes, and vibrations beckoning us with so much dopamine to check our phones, tablets, and smart watches. Yet amidst all this nauseum, or what the late Edward Abby once called syphilizsation, the hum of wings or a flash of iridescence can bring even the most distracted of cubicle zombies out of their stupor to stop, look, and cry out, “hummingbird!”

This was apparently the question that my brain demanded consideration of at 5 am this morning. It makes sense, I guess. I’m in the highlands of Panama, staring out into the darkness of the cloud forest fully engulfed in the dawn chorus that fills the space around me. Last night, I fell asleep reading about hummingbirds. The pile of camera gear and lighting equipment that surrounds me was dragged here with great pains for the purpose of photographing hummingbirds on my Birds of the Cloud Forest workshop I am here to prepare for. And I spent the better part of yesterday photographing hummingbirds. So, it’s probably no coincidence that this is the thing to wake me up.

Apparently, an obsession with hummingbirds has always inflicted our own species here in these latitudes. It would be difficult not to notice the uniqueness of these birds, their speed, their fierceness, their flying capabilities, and all those colors. Where shafts of light pierce through the shadows of the forest, every conceivable color imaginable seems to flicker here and there as hummingbirds dart about the many layers of the canopy. And every culture that we know of who has lived throughout the neotropics have woven the hummingbird’s existence into their cosmology.

Consider the Mayans. After the gods had created the world and all that is in it, they realized they had forgotten to create a messenger to convey their thoughts and hopes and intentions to the people of their creation. To remedy this, one of the gods picked up a small piece of jade and shaped it into an arrow. Holding it in his palm, he breathed life into the jade which took flight in the form of a hummingbird - the messengers of the gods.

There is something poetic and beautiful about the Mayan story of hummingbirds. But as anyone who has spent time around a patch of flowers or a hummingbird feeder can attest, the fierceness and territorial nature of these birds is the stuff of legend. This was not lost to the Aztec, the people of the sun, who lived in what is now Mexico. For these people, Huitzilopochtli was one of the most important deities of their world. He was both the god of the sun and the god of war; he was the fiercest and most important god of the Aztecs in pantheon of gods. And his name quite literally translates to Hummingbird of the South.

Depicted as a hummingbird, considered to be the bird of the sun thanks to the explosion of color that occurs when their feathers refract rays of light, Huitzilopochtli set at the apex of importance to the Aztec. He was the patron god of these people, who know themselves as the people of the sun for this reason. Warriors who died were brought back to life in the form of hummingbirds. And the ritual human sacrifice the Aztec are so well known for today, was a means of nourishing Huitzilopochtli, like so much nectar from a flower, so he could continue to do battle with darkness across the world.

Messengers of the gods, warriors reincarnate, gods of sun and war; the reverence for hummingbirds transcended culture and civilization across this entire hemisphere.

Up here in the cloud forests, watching the sudden kaleidoscope of colors flash in territorial warning from a fiery-throated hummingbird’s gorget at the approach of rival, I can’t help but to envy how interwoven people’s experiences and world views once were with the natural world.

Photographing hummingbirds in the wild can be a lesson in frustration. With wingbeats that flap at a mind bending 800 times a second, these birds live life in the fast lane. Add to this that these animals exist within the dark and shadowy realms of the forest where, at least up here in the cloud forests, the low light environment often demands ISO settings far north of 10,000, and you have a recipe for disaster.

That is, unless you learn to work with flash.

If you are not familiar with multi-flash hummingbird photography, it’s quite simple. You take a flower that hummingbirds are coming into – whether naturally or with sugar water injected into it to lure them in – and you place an array of flashes around it. Personally, I use 3 to 4 flashes for this. Others prefer 4 to 5. Once in place, you reduce your camera’s exposure so low that the photograph goes completely black.

With flash there are always two exposures: the ambient light and the flash itself. The ambient light is controlled by the camera settings. The flash is controlled by, well, the flash. Normally with flash, we set our camera for what we want the background to look like and then we set the flash for what we want to the subject to look like. With multi-flash hummingbird photography, we want to completely remove 100% of the ambient light (the in-camera stuff) so that we can then control 100% of the light with our array of flashes.

While using flash in our photography is all about adding light or controlling light, there is another facet to how flash functions that’s also important to understand. You see, all those settings on the flash that makes the results brighter or darker is all based around how long the flash lights up your subject and not how “powerful” the light itself is. A flash doesn’t get brighter or darker itself. The intensity of the light is constant. Instead, it lights up the world for longer or shorter durations.

This is important to understand when it comes to working with subjects like hummingbirds. When I first started my career as a professional wildlife photographer, colleagues would often suggest you simply set your shutter speed to 1/8000th of a second and work in the best light possible. Well, this meant that there were very few situations you could actually photograph hummingbirds in. Think about the amount of ambient light that was necessary to achieve 1/8000th of a second and still get a proper exposure.

Now-a-days, the beautiful images of hummingbirds we see are usually created with a shutter speed of no more than around 1/200th of a second. In fact, the photograph above was made in the deep shade of the cloud forest, while engulfed in clouds, at 1/200th of a second, f/8, and ISO 200. These settings are possible because of the flash duration – how long the flash is actually lighting up the subject.

With multi-flash hummingbird setups like this, I prefer to set all my flashes to 1/16th power. At this flash duration (remember it’s about speed of the flash and not really the power of the flash), the light hits the subject for about 1/10,000th of a second. Given that a hummingbird’s wings buzz at around 1/800th of a second, this speed of light is more than enough to freeze the tiniest, fastest, and most erreatic of movements in the composition.

Since speed is of the essence when it comes to this style of photography, we then adjust the brightness of the flash by distance. If you have dabbled with flash at all, then you have probably heard of the inverse square law of light. Functionally, this isn’t important to understand the exact mechanics of for wildlife photography. I honestly don’t really believe anyone is doing the mathematical equations in the field. Instead, we simply move a flash closer or further away depending on how much light we want from that angle.

As for the array of flashes, the exact placement of each is purpose driven.

First, there is the key light. This is the main light. It sits at a 45-degree angle (or less) above the flower and usually at a 45-degree (or less) from the angle of my lens. Me, I like to use a soft box on this that is a minimum of 24 inches. I then place this as close to the flower as I can get away with so that the light falls off or transitions to shadows very gradually thus giving the subject a natural and almost three-dimensional look.

Next is the fill flash. This is set off to the left or right side of the subject opposite of the key light. Usually this is also done at about 45-degrees from the subject as well, and also has a soft box attached to control the quality of the light. However, this is set a little lower than the key light and further back since all I want is a kiss of light coming in to help subtly fill in any harsher shadows created by the key light.

From here I move on to the backlight. This flash is situated at a 45-degree angle (or less) from the subject as well. However, as the name implies, this is set behind the subject. The purpose of a backlight is to create definition between the subject and the background by illuminating the edges of the subject.

Last but not least, there is a flash placed facing the background itself. Some photographers prefer to use artificial backgrounds they printed out to look like out of focus vegetation. Some like to use natural backgrounds. And while it’s much easier to use artificial backgrounds, I do both depending on the situation. Without a flash illuminating a background however, all you end up with is a completely black background. So, if you want the green of the forest, for instance, you must light it up behind the hummingbird.

The whole process is a lot of fun to work with and build out. It allows us to create extraordinary photographs of species like hummingbirds that is often not possible otherwise. There is an artistry to this as we create an outdoor studio and design the set and setting we want to have in our composition.

To some, this may sound like so much manipulation. But I would argue that all of us do this every time we step into the field to photograph wildlife as it is. We start by asking ourselves what the light is and approaching the subject accordingly. We then hunt and search for the perfect background to compose our subjects against. From there, we begin to try and artfully arrange all of the “stuff” that is in the environment that will inevitably become a part of the composition. This tree over there; that rock here; set up a little lower to remove the branch that would distract from the photograph in the background. Then once all is arranged with great care, we wait for the subject to do whatever it is that the subject is going to do across our composition.

With multi-flash hummingbird photography, it’s really quite similar. Only, we are going one step further to control the things in our composition that we can control. The subject is still going to do what they want to. And it still takes considerable time and patience to create the photographs that we want – especially since all this a form of photographing birds in flight.

The workshop is, of course, so much more than hummingbirds. We will photograph ornate hawk eagles, a technicolor rainbow of different tropical birds, the gloriously beautiful resplendent quetzal, and search for some of the wild cats that haunt these mountains. But a big part of the diversity and uniqueness of the cloud forests are the hummingbirds. It was very much the elevation and colder temperatures of this realm that has been the primary driver of diversity in hummingbirds as they co-evolved with plants to take the place of other traditional pollinators that don’t fare so well in cooler temperatures. In fact, all three of the hummingbirds in this photograph are endemic species; found only in these mountains.

As spring marches on across North America, hummingbirds are beginning to return from their winter haunts; territories are being reclaimed; nests are being built; mates are being found. As wildlife photographers in the Western Hemisphere, hummingbirds are one of those truly extraordinary opportunities unique from the rest of the world. And as these birds begin to return to the forests and gardens around you, consider adding them to your to-do list. I guarantee they will make you a better wildlife photographer.

As always, if this is a style of photography you have questions about: shoot me an email! I'm always happy to help. Though my cloud forest workshop here begins tomorrow, I have wifi in the evenings!

Cheers,

Jared

P.S. We released a podcast episode about hummingbirds in the cloud forest a couple weeks ago - the lost episode. Lost, as in: I misplaced the episode and somehow thought I had already uploaded. Duh! If you want to check it out, you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or directly from the website here: https://photowildmagazine.com/photowild-podcast-episode-19