Corn

[Snakeguy101]

Corn snake that is.

100mm Tokina Macro
ISO: 800
Shutter speed: 1/80second
Aperture: f/22
2 R1 flash units positioned in front and left of frame
Edits include minor sharpening and cloning the flash reflection out of the eye.


I am still playing with these flash units but so far I love them. Any C&C on how I could get this shot better is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[greybeard68 40]

I like the sharpness and colors, not sure about the composition.

 

[cgipson1]

You should leave teh catchlights... even on snakes!

nice!

 

[jriepe]

Nice shot.

Jerry

 

[STM]

I would have liked to have seen a lot more of the snake. They are such beautiful animals. Also, images of terrestrial animals like that are better photographed from closer to a "worm" eye's view than a bird's eye view.

 

[Snakeguy101]

Thanks for the feed back. What about the composition is bothering y'all? would a crop help? As for the camera angle, the camera was sitting on the ground- I do not think I could get much more wormy without digging a hole. The snake was perched on a rock. Here is another shot from this encounter, maybe you can see it better this way. I think I missed focus by a bit on this one but it may be better compositionally, I don't know.

 

[EricD]

Very nice capture

 

[fokker]

The lighting looks pretty good generally. I would have bumped the shutter speed up a couple of notches to whatever your maximum sync speed is, though to be honest it probably wouldn't make any difference. I'm not sure if it was necessary to stop all the way down to f/22 - especially since you were at a relatively high ISO of 800. If you were unable to get any more power out of the lights then I would have probably sacrificed a small amount of DOF for a lower ISO.

 

[STM]

Thanks for the feed back. What about the composition is bothering y'all? would a crop help? As for the camera angle, the camera was sitting on the ground- I do not think I could get much more wormy without digging a hole. The snake was perched on a rock. Here is another shot from this encounter, maybe you can see it better this way. I think I missed focus by a bit on this one but it may be better compositionally, I don't know.

Part of the problem with photographing snakes is the very nature of how they present themselves. When they are all coiled in different directions it takes your eyes through some weird circuitous paths, which can be disconcerting. The image above is a perfect example. Corn snakes have gorgous colorations on their heads but your eye spends so much time following all the paths of its body that you get lost in that rather than looking at its head! This is another reason why it is usually better to photograph they from a worm's eye view, it tends to mitigate that somewhat, plus your narrower depth of field helps too

 

[BlackSheep]

I like the first shot quite a bit, the only nit-pick I can come up with is that the dark holes in the rock underneath steal the focus from the snake, but of course there's not much you can do about that without some serious PP.
Nice shot!

 

[PixelRabbit]

What a beautiful subject, you captured his colouring nicely I would echo the comments already made but also get the challenge of overcoming the eye wanting to wander, I shot a Northern Water Snake today and faced the same issue.
The one thing that I reeeeally miss is the highlight in his eye, they look very flat, would love to see the shot without them removed, I would guess that the viewer's eye will stay longer on the face/head.

 

[Snakeguy101]

here it is without the catchlight removed.

 

[PixelRabbit]

MUCH better, now I return to his eye/head instead of my eye continuing to float.

 

[jriepe]

Snakeguy,

I like the catchlight in the eye. I have a picture of a snake I took where looking into the snake's eye is like looking into a mirror. I see reflections of the environment and I think of myself but it's not real clear. You can definitely make out the tree reflection in her eye though. I could post it but I don't want to hihack your thread.

Jerry

 

[cgipson1]

MUCH better with the catchlights....... makes the eyes look alive!