Member Profile: Cynthia Walpole

close The fragile, graceful beauty of flying creatures is my inspiration. I am currently focused on creating work based on the hummingbirds of Costa Rica, the country where I grew up and my family still lives. Photographing hummingbirds presents some technical and logistic challenges which I find specially interesting. Because their wings can beat up to 90 beats per second, stopping the action requires an effective shutter speed of about 1/15,000 of a second. Any equipment must be carefully chosen to withstand the tropical climate and bumpy mountain roads. To succeed, this work must reside at the intersection of art and science. Hummingbirds do not have pigment. Their vivid colors come from iridescence, much like oil on water. In order to see this color, the viewer must be placed directly between the light and the object. My husband (also a prize winning photographer) and I have devised a system of 8-12 low powered strobe lights which we use to create a small outdoor studio for our winged subjects. By lighting from several directions at once, we are able to show their brilliant colors. Tiny Costa Rica has about 52 different species of these little flying jewels, which reside at varying elevations in this mountainous country. I have found different hummingbirds from sea level to 11,000 feet. In the past three years of photographing these tiny creatures, I have taken well over 300,000 shots, of which less than 1 in 2,000 are eventually developed into a finished artwork.