people places n things

Success at last

I have become something of a known commodity here at Clove Lakes over the years. I can be found here winter, spring summer and fall. My bag of camera equipment trailing behind me or slung over my back, or even hanging from an odd looking contraption over my chest. So I really stick out in a crowd.

Now patience is a hallmark trait of all nature photographers, and whenever I have some of my more impressive gear sitting on top of one of my many tripods for hours, waiting for the right moment, I attract many curious people who come up to me as they jog back and forth around the park, or walk their strollers, curious of why I have been standing in the same spot for hours.

Often I let them look through my lens to see what it is I'm photographing, and sometimes show them other shots like what they just saw in my viewfinder on my website using my handy tablet. This has led to so many people giving me tips on where they've spotted more nature subjects around the park. One of the tips that quite a few people told me about over the years was that hummingbirds frequent the park. But despite all their info and directions, in all that time I'd never spotted so much as one hummingbird.

But two years ago fortune steered me onto a new path that would lead to my success. It happened when I spotted some jewel weed growing here again, for the first time that I could recall in over 20 years. I was very excited at this discovery because of how great the potential was for fabulous closeups of them covered in dew, or rain drops, after a storm. Dew and raindrops cling to jewel weed like no other plant anywhere that I've seen. Certainly not here at the lake. And with my new improved equipment I could get even better shots of them than the ones I captured here 30 years ago when I first moved to the island.

From that first day last year that I spotted some, I started coming back before sunrise on every day off I could spare. They were everywhere, especially one particular spot between Clove and Martling lakes sitting right next to the brook that connects the two. That bush is simply enormous. Twenty yards long at least. Six feet high on average. 15 ft across at it's widest point. It provided me with endless flowers groupings to chose from. So I came here every single time and stayed each time for hours under different lighting. The immense thicket rewarded me with many nice shots of the bright orange flowers and the insects that were attracted to them. But the best was still yet to come.

One day out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw what had to be the biggest dragonfly I'd ever seen. I wanted to capture a picture of that too. But it zipped off before I could get a good look. A little while later, it happened again. This time I got a better look at it, following the movement of the flowers shaking noticeably from the giant bug moving in there. When it finally cleared the leaves and vines obscuring it from me, the bug in question turned out to be a hummingbird. AWESOME!!!! I'd finally found them.

Now every morning that followed in which I came to the lake I dropped another 'tele' lens into my camera bag to hopefully capture the hummers coming to feed off the jewel weed. But that wasn't a perfect solution however, as I owned no autofocus telephoto lens to pair with my new D500 that could keep up with this new generation camera, and get me my shots of these diminutive speedsters.

After days of trying everything in my arsenal I settled on my 30 year old 300mm nikkor. It is a manual focus only lens, but as all my other autofocus tele zooms couldn't keep up with the hummingbirds anyway, I figured I might as well go with the longest lens I had that gave me the best image quality, and this was it. But honestly I just have to ask, when is the last time any of you tried to capture a picture of a hummingbird with a manual focus lens?? It was maddening. (One even floated for a few seconds about 5 ft in front of my lens looking at his reflection. Alas my lens only focuses down to 7 ft.).

But fortunately this was a bumper crop year for jewel weed here at Clove lakes, and this bush had thousands of nectar rich flowers on it, so I got loads of opportunities to try and get some in focus and eventually after much time and effort I finally succeeded in capturing quite a few shots of the hummers feeding. But while getting any shot in focus of a subject this small and elusive with a manual focus lens is an achievement unto itself, none of the shots rang my bell and so I determined to save up to purchase either Nikon’s 200-500mm honking beast, or Tamron’s slightly less massive 150-600mm come the following September by hook or crook.

Before my chance to do so Tamron came out with a 100-400mm zoom that was far smaller and lighter and possibly even more responsive than either of those two honking logs and I purchased it the following January. I then put it through its paces, hunting deer, ducks, herons, and even cityscape panoramas. More than satisfied with the results from it, I just had to wait until late August / early September for the hummers to return to Capistrano.

But this year even though the jewel weed were once again blooming everywhere, the flowers themselves were smaller and noticeably less full and lush. And the hummingbirds were FAR less prevalent. I am fairly certain the two things were related. Weeks went by and I still hadn't captured a single shot of a hummingbird feeding. In fact I had maybe just about 7 or 8 sightings total, and several of those were just ones chasing away rivals way up among the tree tops.

But as I said before patience is the hallmark of a good nature photographer, and sure enough one day the opportunity to lock in on one with my new lens finally came to pass.

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