I'm ridiculously far away, so refrained from posting anything for awhile, hoping you'd get a real offer from someone close by. I see that your lonely little post is just sitting there. And what a wonderful offer it is! I wish I lived within 50 miles of you, but I'm actually closer to 650 miles (I checked on Mapquest).

I'm making my own feeders and adding real flowers to the garden this year, and would just leap at the chance to have you take photographs. It would be great to have pictures of hummingbirds sipping at my artistic endeavors, but I don't have the telephoto capacity with my camera to do it well. This is the best I could manage from inside the house. It shows a very early prototype of a mini liquor bottle feeder, but they've gotten much nicer as I've continued to improve them. Unlike this early feeder, the flowers I'm making now are highly realistic. Even the "cork" part that goes into the bottle is green and has sepals, not red as in this example. This early one is vaguely based on Salvia coccinea. I have nicer ones now, and one of these days I'm going to do a separate post and show them.

As you can see, the hummers aren't critical of this early effort, but the more realistic flowers I'm working on now are more satisfying to me and nicer for people to look at.

If you do any travelling, and end up in the Pittsburgh area, I would love to have you over for a photo session. Good heavens, you could stay for a week! I know it's a longshot, but just thought I'd mention it. Who knows, maybe you have relatives around here. Just thought I'd throw the idea out there--far-fetched as it is.

***Extra credit bonus points for anyone who can guess the vine from its leaves!!***

Hi Kristin, sorry this is a late response. As yet I've had no responses. I will try again when the hummer season kicks up. I 'd be right over if we lived closer....I assure you of that! LOL

My wife and I put our feeders out today as we saw on the migration map that the little jewels are on their way. We are trying a feeder in a new location to see if we get better results.

I always clip flower blooms from our plants and attach them to the feeder for natural looking photos. Your feeders already have the blooms there! :-) Our feeders have 3 ports but once the hummers come regularly, I plug 2 of them up to force them to come into camera view. Spraying some sugar water from a mister helps too and looks just like dew in the photos.

No need for telephoto capability. I use a 150mm Macro lens mounted on a tripod and just prefocus it on the attached flower. I use 3 external flash units and control the shutter via a remote from about 30-40 feet away.

Not sure how to post picks here yet but I can e-mail you a couple that I have on the pc already if you'd like to see what I do. Best of luck this hummer season.....Stan

PS....Been a Steeler fan for 35+ years.....oops! have I revealed what an old man I am! LOL

I'm sorry to see that you haven't gotten any responses to your wonderful offer. C'mon guys, how can you pass up a deal like that?! I had given up on you ever getting back to me, so it's a pleasure to hear from you at last.

Did you see my other post with my feeder pictures? I did eventually get around to posting them. The subject line is "Hand made Hummingbird Feeders--Pictures from Photobucket." I got a bunch of responses, but it has since slipped pretty far down the list of threads.

I have a macro lens also, but it's a standard 50mm. In comparison to mine, yours is a telephoto--a weak telephoto, but a telephoto nonetheless. I would really have to place mine close to the feeder, so close that it might be intimidating to the hummers. I love my camera, but it's almost 30 years old. I suppose that cameras nowadays have remote controls that can be used to trip the shutter (like tv remotes), but I haven't really kept up with the technology. With my camera, I would need to use a very long cable release if I wanted to trip the shutter from 30-40 feet away. I suppose you're old enough to remember those?

Maybe some day I'll buy a new, state of the art camera, but finances probably won't allow that for some time. I'll also need flash units, which will hopefully be more affordable than the camera itself. When the time comes, I will research it carefully, and buy something of good quality.

Do the flashes frighten the hummingbirds, or do they take it pretty well?

Hi Kristen,...I saw your photos of the feeders. The flowers on them look pretty realistic. We never have bunches of hummers so we use feeders that only take about 6-8 ounces at full capacity....and even then we only fill up about halfway until we see them coming regularly. 4 to 5 hummers per season is usually our max with the total reaching it's max near the end of the season when the little things are gearing up for their southern trip! :-)

I've been doing photography since about 1983 or so. I got into it just as autofocus cameras were on the market. I recently sold all my film stuff and went completely digital. The flashes may startle them a little at first but I gragually get them accustomed to them....after 3-4 shots when they realize they cause no harm, they just ignore them. I may take a shot and not take one their next visit to the feeder and basically alternate taking pics until they are used to them and so as not to stress them out.

Once they pick a feeder as their primary food source, they are surely not going to give up their bounty that easily! :-)

I have 2 remotes, a wired one that I modified to a 40 foot length and also a wireless remote. Back in the film days, I could easily spend 5-6 hours at a time and taking 3-4 rolls of film at 36 exposures a roll and end up with maybe 10 images that I was satisfied with. I tell folks it is similar to fishing except I can see when I am getting a bite! LOL

Back when we had our health, my wife and I had 2 huge flower beds just for hummers and butterflies. The smallest one was over 24 feet in diameter. Some years we had so many flowers that the hummers would ignore our measly feeders. We've reduced our gardens back to about a third of what they were so I'm interested to see if feeder activity picks up.

We're in the process of having our kitchen remodeled. That is why I was late in responding. Take care!.....Stan

Stan,
My realistic flower hummingbird feeders are even smaller in capacity than yours. They are made with 50ml liquor bottles, which hold only 1.77 ounces. I fill them up entirely, and at the height of the season, put up two or three at a time. It usually takes at least a day and a half for them to drink all of the sugar water, or, at most, 2-3 days. This suits me fine because I believe in cleaning them frequently. I don't like to take any chances with the health of "my" birds, and having smaller feeders also leads to less waste of solution.

I know I get at least 4 birds, and maybe a few more, but it's hard to say for certain. They're hard to tell apart and who can say for sure if I'm seeing the same male at each visit, or two different ones. At very least I have had one adult male, one adult female, and then a couple of babies by midsummer. If there are a few more, it's hard to say.

I am gradually expanding our garden. Last year I had Bleeding Hearts, native red Columbine, Agastache, some purple hybrid Lobelias, Lobelia cardinalis, Zinnias, and Salvia coccinea. In spite of the nice flowers, and contrary to the experience of some people on this forum, my adult birds were feeder junkies. I had trouble getting the adults to use flowers--even highly attractive ones like Monarda didyma, Agastache, and Salvia coccinea. The babies were all over my flowers last summer, but the adults showed less interest in the real flowers than in the feeders. I don't know the reason, other than that I think it takes less energy to visit feeders, especially when your garden is relatively small, like mine, and you don't have huge stands of flowers. In most cases, I only had about 3-6 specimens of each plant. Maybe they need large massings of flowers, like in your formerly huge hummer garden. Or, maybe I can flatter myself to think that they appreciate the realism of my feeders!

One of these years I'll invest in a digital camera. I understand, though, that some models have a significant delay in snapping the picture. I imagine you must have the kind that takes instantaneous images. I don't think wildlife photography would be possible without instant results. I wonder why they make them that way? It must be a memory thing or some design constraint. Who in their right mind would want a camera to have a lag in the shutter?