Black-crested Coquette
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As much as I try to always get creative and shoot something other than a clean portrait, sometimes that is what a photo calls for. This adorable Black-crested Coquette called for just that, a nice clean portrait with a smooth out of focus background. Emilie and I were working with a bunch of species of hummingbird in this one garden area when she saw this little fella take a moment to perch on this bare stick. up until that point we both only had a few ok shots of these birds hovering around the flowers as they fed. This was the first chance we got to see it perched for more than .5 seconds and this guy stayed here for a while which was awesome. I did move around a bunch and try to incorporate other things in the frame but all the stuff around the bird only made the image worse so in the end I flipped the teleconverter switch on the lens, composed up this shot, moved into position to have him against the lighter green with the darker corners to make a natural vignette in the background and waited for him to turn his cute little head to the side to show off all this fun details! I will say even with such a clean background it's fun to pay attention to it and place the bird in the exact spot you want to make the colors and tones fit around the bird in a pleasing way. It's fascinating to me with such a basic portrait you can still put a good bit of through into it.
•Location: Costa Rica
•Exposure: 1/400 @f/4
•ISO: 640
•Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
•Focal Length: 640mm
•Lens: Nikon Z 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S
•Camera: Nikon Z9
