Rick,

A couple of quick comments on your Chondro shots.

First of all, I like the idea of the chondros on a log in front of a black background, however I don't think it turned out the way you intended. More on that at the end, but first...

The biggest problem I see with these shots is that they aren't sharp (in good focus). This doesn't appear to be a focusing error, but rather due to the use of too slow a shutter speed (SS).



Your first shot is a great example. This is a nicely composed shot, but the SS is so slow (1/6th of a second) that the snake moved a little, or more likely, your hand moved slightly. Even though 1/6th of a second sounds like a very short time, in photographic terms it isn't. To get good handheld shots, a good general rule is to always make sure your shutter speed is longer than some threshold, like 1/50th of a second. Faster is better.



If you look at this shot, you see it is a little sharper. This time the shutter speed was 1/50th of a second. It is now beginning to get on the threshold of being sharp enough, but a SS of 1/100th would have been better.

One solution to this problem is to use flash. The flash will allow faster shutter speeds and the very short duration of the flash will freeze the motion. (Even though the SS may be 1/60th, the flash only fires and lights the scene for 1/2000th of a second or even less.)

Another separate issue I see here is that your black background is too obvious. There are a couple of fixes for this...

1. Iron the background so it hangs flat . This will reduce some of the reflections.
2. Use flash. The short duration of the flash firing will leave the background pure black.
3. Increase the distance between the subject and background. By having the background further away, you can keep it from being in focus. A good rule is to try and make sure the subject is closer to the camera than it is to the background.
4. Put the black background at an angle to the flash. If you can't move the flash on your camera, turn the background slightly so that it isn't perpendicular to the flash. The causes any reflection off the background to bounce off at an angle, preventing the camera from seeing the reflection.

With these tricks, you can get a rich, black background which really brings out the color in something like a chondro.

Here's an example black background pic -



And here's how it was taken (another photographer taking his turn here). My friend Tim is just holding the stick and frog in front of his black t-shirt. By making sure I was closer to the frog that he was and paying attention to the angle of his t-shirt to the log, I got a good black background.



Good luck,
Chris
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

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