When we retired and moved to Arizona, we rented an apartment right on the edge of the Saguaro National Forest. Our balcony looked out on a vast expanse of all kinds of the huge desert plants, and we often had visits from some of the native wildlife. Our favorites were families of Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds.

These tiny gems of birds frequented our area from April to November, and flew South each year for their winter vacations. There were other birds and critters around, including hawks, roadrunners, javalinas, coyotes and others. However, as an old photojournalist, I immediately chose the challenge of capturing the little beauties. I hung a hummingbird feeder on the corner of my balcony. It consisted of a plastic bottle of honey with small feeding holes and a platform for the tiny bird feet. Then, I sat down on my deck chair, holding my Nikon equipped with a 200 millimeter zoom lens.

I could have attached an electric flash unit, but I didn't want to spook my expected guests. This was the era just before digital cameras, so I loaded the Nikon with 400 ASA (very sensitive to light) Ektachrome daylight film. I used transparency film, because I believe Kodacolor or other print film always add too much artificial-looking red to the picture. I wanted my colorful models to look exactly on film as they do in real life.

I picked early morning, when the bright desert sun was shielded by my porch overhang, but adding considerable reflected light to the area where the feeder was hanging. Not wanting to disturb the wild birds, I sat in another corner a dozen feet away, the shutter on my camera set at 1/250th of a second. And waited. Sure enough, their sensitive little nostrils must have picked up the scent of honey, and two hummingbirds flew to the feeder. One was a male, with his bright ruby red vest, followed by the female who was smaller and all light brown.

I got some good shots from my corner position, but when I had the transparencies processed, they were disappointing. I hadn't considered that hummingbirds' wings flap at almost supersonic speed, and in all my shots the wings were just blurs. A couple of the slides were OK, because the blurry wings added some feeling of motion to the composition.

So, the next day, with a fresh roll of film, I marked it to be push processed at ASA1600, and set the shutter speed to 1/1000th of a second. The birds came back, this time with another couple, so I had a field day shooting their antics. The results were much

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