How a Photographer Transformed Her Yard Into a Hummingbird Portrait Studio

Wings ablur, zipping from bloom to bloom, hummingbirds rarely seem to rest. Photographer Soo Baus can relate. Between shifts as a trauma ICU nurse, Baus is usually outside, camera in hand, searching Seattle’s parks for birds. But when a slow recovery from COVID-19 sapped her energy in the summer of 2023, she decided to focus on birds closer to home. In particular, she turned her attention to her resident frenetic fliers: Anna’s Hummingbirds. With a few tweaks to her yard and a lot of patience, Baus captured some of the best photos she’s ever taken of the birds—right outside her front door.

First, Baus gathered the elements of a “hummingbird playground,” including a bubbling water fountain and lots of nectar-rich flowers, chosen at a local nursery to bloom throughout the season. Then she got creative. Instead of planting directly in the ground, Baus kept the flowers in small pots and balanced them on stools, stumps, and folding tables in her yard, which allowed her to rearrange things to catch the perfect light or change up the background of her photos. “Everything was mobile,” Baus says. “I could move things everywhere.” She even set the flower pots on lazy Susans, which she could rotate to capture fresh angles.

Baus has a couple of other tricks—like taking down her nectar feeders once she sets up her camera, to encourage hummers to visit the more photogenic flowers—but the real key, she says, is putting in the time. During what she called her “hummingbird summer,” Baus spent up to seven hours each day photographing in her yard: from around 6:30 to 11 a.m., then a few more hours in the afternoon if the light was good and she had the energy. And while Baus has upgraded her gear over the years (she currently uses a Sony Alpha 1 camera with a 200–600mm lens; “I’m stopping here—well, maybe not”), she believes photographers at any level can take pleasing hummingbird pictures. Get a feeder or a flower the birds like, she says, and then “go and sit. Once they’re comfortable with you, they will come and visit.”

One more tip: Make sure to look through all your photos. Yes, all of them. Because hummingbirds move so quickly, Baus shoots up to 30 frames per second. It’s often only later that she sees the details—like a perfect sphere of water seemingly suspended on the bird’s delicate bill—that make the picture. “There’s always surprises.”

This story originally ran in the Summer 2025 issue as “On Balance.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.