A tale of two pictures.

Day 60 started off with an idea for a shot that never happened. I don't know why but I wanted a technical challenge, and I thought I would try and capture something high-speed. What's faster than a snake striking? I have snakes! An idea!

I setup up the lighting, did some test shots, figured out how to kill reflections from the glass, dialed in the focus, got my exposure sorted out, and got everything ready. I was planning to crop out any food items for those somewhat squeamish about such things, and no, I never feed live prey to my reptiles.

What is it that they say about the best laid plans? I dropped the rat, tried to grab it again with my tongs, and had my hand promptly ripped open by a five foot long python.

So no high-speed reptile shot. You get a flower instead:



I decided to take the opportunity to play around with the flower, so I cranked the lights, picked a light coloured flower and tried to blow the hell out of the highlights and see what I got. I like the effect, and all in all, the day could have been worse.

Although my hand does hurt.

Let's compare!

Here we are on day 17 of my Project 365, and I thought we would do a quick comparison.

Here is a shot I took on September 3rd of my Jungle Carpet Python, Zoot:



Looking at this picture now, I decided to try a similar shot, but using the tools and techniques that I've picked up in the four and a half months since I took it. Here is the result from today:



Better white balance and colour, better lighting, and better composition (to my mind). Essentially, I think I've improved on pretty much any point you choose to compare.

I'd also like to add: Zoot is awesome. I luvs her!

More of the menagerie!

We have a lot of animals in our house. At the moment, the whole zoo consists of:

- One Parrot
- Three Snakes
- Two Rabbits
- Four Aquariums (two freshwater and two marine)

So far, the Parrot is the easiest subject to shoot, as her curious nature lends itself well to composition. The aquariums present a challenge, just shooting through glass, and the snakes don't really like to pose.

Having said that, this is how we learn, right?

Tonight I got my largest snake out. Her name is Zoot, and she is a year-and-a-half old Jungle Carpet Python. These snakes are known for their fantastic yellow/beige on black patterning, and Zoot is no exception. I tried a macro of her head, and despite some attempts at ambient lighting, I still needed the flash. An off-camera flash would have been quite a bit nicer here, but unfortunately, I don't have one... yet.



I finally captured this after about two or three dozen attempts. It's fairly heavily cropped, but I'm happy with the sharpness and the colour saturation.

I used the 50mm f/1.8 again, with the 12mm extension tube. Settings were:

- ISO 200
- f/2.5
- .1 sec exposure
- Flash fired

Comments and criticism are, of course, welcome!