C & C Lizard

PBSNature · Nov 15, 2011

Hey again everyone. I was practicing composition today trying to grasp the rule of thirds. I have a setting on my camera that displays the grid lines inside my view finder so it makes it a little easier to do. I PP this picture and will post the original as well. I purposely over exposed the original image so that the lizard wouldn't come out so dark. I knew that I could tweak the settings later since I shot them in Raw format. This is what I came up with. I warmed up the image along with highlighting the darks and shadows on the lizard a little more to compensate for the over exposure. Please let me know what you think and the image is freely editable. Remember that this is shot on a 6 MP camera so zooming will most likely drop quality too much to be usable with the pixalation and what not.

Over exposed picture with Blown out white wall behind.

PP photo using Photoshop CS5

All C & C Welcome!

BlackSheep · Nov 15, 2011

Neat lizard!

In terms of the rule of thirds, you got it right horizontally but not vertically, if you decide to crop the image later try to get the lizard's head above or below the centre. I also think that you overdid it on the overexposure idea, I see why you did it that way, but the detail on the lizard has been lost a bit.

It's a shame that you weren't able to get closer to it, because what I really like about the photo is the tilt of the lizard's head and the spread of it's feet - that is quite the pose! I took the liberty of cropping it just to emphasize it's expression:

Futurelight · Nov 15, 2011

I like the subject

Where I am now there is the madeiran wall lizard! So cool but so difficult to capture in a shot! Way too quick!

blackrose89 · Nov 15, 2011

kudos on catching any shot of lizard LOL!

PBSNature · Nov 16, 2011

Thanks for the recrop. I am still a little too new to the Rule of Thirds I guess lol. I wish I was closer too but sadly this lizard wouldn't have stayed for long if I was. I happened to have my tri-pod out with me and seen him doing his little mating thing. I did manage to get a nice picture of that and then he went all drama on me and tilted his head lol. This is one of those times I wish I had a higher res camera so that when cropping and zooming in PP it would not have lost so much detail. Sadly the 6mp sensor can only handle so much. Thanks so much for the tips on how to properly set it up with the ROT's. As for the overexposure idea i can see what you mean. Being newer to photography I am still grasping all the in's and out's of composing and exposing a shot. At the time from previous pictures I took of him properly exposed they made his body too dark with the lighting the way it was. So i thought why not over expose and compensate later? Now I know not to over do it so much so that I can keep more detail lol. Again thanks all.

I swear when i first reviewed this picture on the computer, the first thing that came to mind was the dramatic chipmunk on youtube. Then it kinda looked like he was saying "You talking to me?" Lmao. I have about 30 shots of him from where I was sitting and he sure did strike a few funny poses for the camera.