Story Of The Image
Photographing oddities in the bird kingdom is one of my niches and what better way of doing it than shooting this extremely awkward-looking bird. This hummingbird has the largest bill-to-body ratio of any birds found in the animal kingdom.
Location
Sword-billed hummingbirds are found in South America but are best spotted in countries like Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. To get this image I traveled to the Andean highlands near a city called Manizales. To get there i flew to Pereira and drove for a few hours.
Preparing The Scene
A sturdy tripod to keep the camera steady was one of the major requirements. Since we had prior knowledge of where these birds feed we positioned ourselves to get the cleanest backgrounds possible.
Composing The Shot
I usually like to compose my images where I give my subjects enough ‘breathing room’. In this case, I felt that composing the image tighter would emphasize the most important part of the bird – the bill!
Lighting
The only way to photograph this bird in flight was to shoot in natural light at very high speeds.
Perfecting in Post Processing
This is how my image straight out of my camera looked:
As always, the first plan is to take care of the RAW file and process the image to get it as close as possible to the one.
Next, I fixed the overall colors. I reduced the yellows and bumped the greens and blues.
This was one of the images where I felt that the image could take a little of everything, more brightness, contrast, shadows, and the list goes on.
Next, I opened the RAW file to edit in Photoshop.
I added more brightness and contrast to the image:
Once this was done my image was ready for resize and sharpness as last steps. I resized the file to my desired online posting size of 1800 pixels on the longer side and then ran smart sharpen at 72% to get my desired file.
The process to convert file to sRGB and saving remains the same as always.
About The Bird
This is the largest Hummingbird with its bill larger than the body with which they drink nectar from tubular flowers. Since its bill is incredibly long, so they use their feet to preen and scratch. This neotropical Hummingbird can be spotted both in the montane forests at the altitude of 2,500metres and 3,000metres, and in the temperate zone of Andes in Venezuela and Bolivia. It is hard not to notice it as it visits the feeder for its muted green body and bronze hued head.
