Reticulated Pythons

jensgt · May 17, 2012

A friend of mine has 11 pythons and he brought a couple out today for me to take pics of. Beautiful creatures!

Snakeguy101 · May 17, 2012

Not bad. You certainly nailed the focus and exposure. I like the level of detail in them as well. I do think most of them need more depth though. Also work on your composition some more and play around with some tighter crops on the first two

Infinite_Day · May 17, 2012

He's not worried about mites? They are pretty creatures but I've never understood why somebody would want an animal that large. We have one Ball python and it's large enough. The wife has it to keep in her Bio classroom.

jensgt · May 17, 2012

I can't answer for him about mites or why he wants them but he certainly cares for them well and it is something he seems to be very passionate about.

They are very tricky to photograph because they are always moving! lol. I look forward to more practice with them so I can get some better pics.

Joel_W · May 17, 2012

Over all a nice set, but DOF seems like a constant issue in most of your pictures. Picture #1 would be truly outstanding if the entire portion of the snake was in proper focus. Same goes for the last two pictures. The eye shot would have really been special if the rest of the head was in focus. And of course the last picture fails because there is a huge DOF issue.

Snakeguy101 · May 17, 2012

A good trick with most snakes is to cover their head and get them in a coiled position. When you have the settings in the camera where you want them. uncover the head and you will have about 30 seconds or so to shoot before active snakes will start moving again. Some snakes will just sit there and hang out for a while and you can grab a few good shots that way.

ID, why would he be worried about mites? Snake mites are exotic and do not occur in the wild here and cannot be picked up in the grass if that is what you were wondering.

jensgt · May 17, 2012

Thanks for the comments. Like I said its a huge learning curve to work with these snakes...I had about 15 minutes with them. Hopefully next time I will have some more time and be able to mess with my settings a little bit. To say the last picture "fails" is pretty short sighted IMO. I actually like that picture the best.

cgipson1 · May 17, 2012

jensgt said:
Thanks for the comments. Like I said its a huge learning curve to work with these snakes...I had about 15 minutes with them. Hopefully next time I will have some more time and be able to mess with my settings a little bit. To say the last picture "fails" is pretty short sighted IMO. I actually like that picture the best.

Nice shots! Beautiful subjects!

I do agree that more DOF is needed on the last one... you have a very small in focus subject (Head).. and then the huge distracting blurry colorful background.... that TOTALLY draws your attention away from the head, instead of complementing as it should.

Big Mike · May 18, 2012

Nice shots. I love the color on that yellow & grey one.

Retics are big snakes and they get bigger. I used to active in my local Herp. society and there was a couple who had one that was just shy of 20' long and just shy of 200lbs. I help hold her a few times...the body was as big around as my head.