We took it easy this morning. When we got out of bed, there was an almost-solid cloud layer and a light breeze. I had my usual breakfast then decided to put up our hummingbird photography setup to photograph the hummingbirds because a male Rufous Hummingbird had come to the feeder while I was eating. Up until then, we had only seen female and juvenile Broad-Tailed Hummingbirds.

I started to set up our hummingbird photography setup around 9:40. Our setup has changed since we were in Arizona in March and April 2010 because J wanted to have her own setup instead of sharing ours so that we can photograph at the same time. She doesn't quite have all of the pieces ready for her own setup, so I set up my setup. I used a Canon Speedlite 580EX II and a Canon Speedlite 550EX powered by a Quantum Turbo 2x2, a Sunpak Super Auto 383 (aka Sunpak 383) powered by a second Quantum Turbo 2x2, and two Sunpak 383 powered by Imedion 2100 mAh Ultra Low Discharge NiMH AA batteries. The Sunpaks recycle really fast when set at 1/16th power, like they are for hummingbird photography to get a short burst of light, and I'm thinking about selling one of my Quantum Turbo 2x2s and the CS4 cable for a Sunpak 383. The two Canon flashes were placed in front and to the right of the subject with one above and one below. One Sunpak 383 was placed to the left of the subject at about its level, one Sunpak 383 was placed above and behind the left side of the subject for a rim light, and one Sunpak 383 illuminated the background. I used one of the backgrounds that J had had printed of some out-of-focus green foliage. The image was much better than the patterned cloth that we had used before, but I was worried about it being printed on luster paper (like a semi-gloss) instead of matte paper. Fortunately, there weren't any bad reflections. The flashes were triggered using PT-04TM wireless flash triggers.

I was ready to photograph around 10:40 and the first hummingbird came around 10:55. One, or two, would come about once every 10-15 minutes, so I was able to get lots of shots. However, only female Broad-Tailed Hummingbirds (left) came to the feeder while I was photographing. While female hummingbirds are nice, they lack the magnificent, colorful gorget that males have. I must say, the lighting on the birds was the best that we've ever had, and the background looked better than we've ever had too. However, I think the background is a little over exposed, and I didn't notice that until I returned to the RV — it looked good on the camera's LCD display. The wing position in the image to the left is a little unusual, but I like the image because the wing feathers can be clearly seen.

J came out and took over around 11:50 when I went inside to have lunch.
I went out to the hummingbird setup around 1:20 because J said one/some of the flashes weren't firing. I discovered that the Quantum battery powering the two Canon flashes had gone to sleep. When I powered it back on, I noticed that the power level was really low — maybe I hadn't recharged it after we used it last time. It started to rain while I was out there, so we brought the hummingbird setup into the RV with the flashes still attached to the light stands, and I started charging all of the batteries (Quantums and AAs). I worked up a blog entry and J made a batch of Teriyaki Marinade and started marinating a Flatiron steak. Then J looked into 20x30 matte prints and found several places that do them fairly inexpensively. I prepared three blurry-foliage backgrounds to print and started to upload them to EZPrints.com. Their upload progress indicator kept increasing the upload time, and I stopped the upload when the estimated upload time reached 8 hrs! I'll wait until we have some free Wi-Fi to upload them. I processed some images for a stock submission then set up the grill after the rain stopped. We turned on the generator around 5:45 for an hour so J could microwave some potatoes and run the vacuum cleaner on the floors and so that we could charge our house batteries. We didn't get much solar-electric power today through the thin clouds this morning and then through the dark clouds this afternoon.

We had dinner around 6:05 of grilled marinated Flatiron steak, grilled corn on the cob (we each had half an ear), half a "baked" potato each, and leftover green beans. It was tasty. It also started to rain again while we ate, so I lucked out with the grilling.

As I was doing the dishes, J cleaned the inside of all of our windows. We hadn't done that in quite a while, and they needed it. Then I processed more images for a stock submission. We ran the generator for another hour around 8:30.