Patience is a Virtue

Happy Landings, originally uploaded by Cocoabiscuit.

This shot, Happy Landings, of a hummingbird, took approximately 40 shots to get one good one. For most of the snaps, the hummingbird was either out of the frame, the wings looked funny, or was at an angle that wasn't quite right. Luckily, I had the leisure to just stand in one place for a while, shooting when it seemed right, moving to another spot to do a few more, etc.
To set up the shot, I knew I wanted a fast shutter speed (1/500) to best capture him. Faster than this, I probably wouldn't have had enough light in this spot under the umbrella of tree leaves and I wouldn't have been able to "stop" him but still get a sense of motion in the wings. I wanted to blur the background, because the hummingbird was the main event, not the leaves behind him, so I used a large aperture (f 5.6). I let the camera choose the ISO, 3200 in this case. I used the maximum zoom on my lens of 200 mm and used a 1.4x teleconverter. I would have liked to have been closer, but I seemed to scare them away at closer distances.
I shot this at the Boyce-Thompson Arboretum, Superior, Arizona (about an hour northeast of Phoenix). It's part of the Arizona State Park System and the University of Arizona.
Want some hummingbird trivia? They are among the smallest of birds and the only ones that can fly backwards. Like bees they get nectar from flowers, but need to eat insects to get enough protein. They have the highest metabolism of all animals and their heart rate is 1250 beats per minute and their wings beat about 3,000 times per minute. Their nests are held together with spider silk and although most don't make it past the first year, they can live up to a decade.