hey, remember that these are just my opinions, I'm not trying to totally rail you on these.

the second one and the last one are serious steps in the right direction.

The second one is technically stronger (better exposed) than the last one, although I think the last one is more interesting. Here's why.

The second one is well exposed. it is perhaps a half-stop underexposed, which would take a really really small bump in curves or levels to correct - no big deal. All of the highlights are there, and no detail has been lost due to clipping. The snake has a good amount of room to "look," which the snake in the first photo does not have - he's looking right off the edge of the frame. In fact, the second photo might still be improved by a bit of cropping to make more of the frame empty. Usually this means that only SOME of the snake actually makes it into the frame, and some is lost in the ether. As long as the amount that is lost makes sense, it will improve the photo. A tail tip usually doesn't make sense, because it is often just an overlooked detail in the framing. A whole snake minus an inch of tail is incomplete, but if only a third of the snake is in the frame, it makes sense that a lot of snake isn't in the frame.

I guess that every time I am posing a photo, I consider what it important and what is not - if a particular detail is not important to the shot, i won't let it waste my space in the frame. No reason to have unnecessary elements just hanging around collecting dust. That's why out of the 8000 photos I took last year, I have fewer than 20 that I think are great, and fewer than 200 that I think are good. I have thousands that are in focus, properly exposed, or otherwise good that have stuff in them that spoils them - sticks or fingers out of frame, amputated tails, etc.

The second set is more interesting because of the angle. You've come at the snake from the front, so it doesn't just look like a field guide voucher shot. The last one is the strongest because of the negative space on the right - I either want to see where the snake is going, or where it came from...either is perfectly fine...but I don't think that the wall behind it is interesting without the ledge, which is why the virtually identical photo second-to-last is not as strong - too much wall, not enough ledge. The other thing that CAN be included in a the photo would be some context - I've seen many great shots of snakes on roads that are only good because it shows the road meandering off into the distance - the scenery is just as important as the snake, in some cases more important.

Shooting in hard sunlight is difficult - I usually close the aperture as much as I need to, and no more. Recently I've been shooting LOTS of small birds - they are the only animals moving in the balmy -22f we've been having these last few weeks, and the don't require a small aperture to get good DoF. Once I have the DoF right, the shutter speed adjusts the exposure. I usually put the ISO as low as I can get away with - although with birds I often raise it just to force shutter speeds over 1/800s. Herps can definately be photographed at low shutters, so that hardly matters here. To keep the details in hard sunlight, meter from the brightest area on the snake and overexpose it by a stop or so - that will maintain the detail in the highlights and still give you some shadow detail, easy to fix in photoshop. Also try to pick a background with more middle tones than highlights and dark tones.
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Erik Williams

fattailed geckos, western hognoses, and a bunch of postage stamps.
Contact me
www.chicagoherp.org
Chicago Herpetological Society

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