Shutterbug Photo of the Day

Our Shutterbug Photo of the Day is delightful shot of a tiny hummingbird in flight by Brian Phillips.

“In our back yard, we have several hummingbird feeders and the birds are particularly thirsty in the late afternoon/early evening hours," writes Phillips. "Whenever I feel like shooting something around that time, I just go out into my backyard. I've experimented with very high shutter speeds in order to freeze their fast moving wings, but that usually requires bright sun, a very high ISO, or High Speed Sync on my flash. I've gotten better results by just using my flash with 2nd curtain sync and a shutter speed within my sync speed; in this case 1/200th. By dialing down the ambient light with an f/11 aperture the flash was able to freeze the wings pretty effectively in this shot. Unfortunately I forgot to also dial down the ISO, as this was shot at 1600, but it still came out relatively noise-free."

This image was captured with a Canon 5D Mark III with a 70-200mm Canon L-series lens at 200mm focal length.

See a larger version of the photo in the Shutterbug Photo of the Day gallery here.

If you want to enter Shutterbug Photo of the Day, post an image in the Shutterbug Photo of the Day Gallery and include your real name and some background on the image (how and where it was shot; the story behind the image; gear and settings used etc.) in the description field to qualify.

We will select one Shutterbug Photo of the Day image every month to run as a full-page feature in the magazine.