I will try and touch on everything.

First and foremost, dont be afraid to experiement. Take many many pictures and pick through the best. You'll gradually develop a sense of how to replicate the winners. I often will take 100 shots in a session, although I am using an SLR which takes pictures very fast. In my jungle post below I took 119 shots (filled up my 1gig card with RAW pics).

Focusing - When I used them, point and shoot cameras (what you have, meaning frame the shot through an lcd screen... ie not an slr) generally do not focus well up close when zoomed. If there is a macro setting, use it (usually looks like a flower). Make sure you are not zoomed at all. Move the camera back or forward to frame the shot. Try using zoom later if you want to see if your camera can focus really close while zoomed.

The majority of the time you will want to try to get the boas eyes in focus. So frame the boas eyes in the center and press the shutter button halfway down, telling the camera to focus there... reframe the shot (while holding it halfway down) ... then take the picture.

Color - The majority of the time when your color is off it is the white balance. Most digital cameras, even $1000 ones, do not have the best auto white balance... especially in low light/indoor situations. To fix this your best bet is to figure out how to change your cameras white balance setting and mess around with it. There will usually be settings like sun, shade, flash, etc .... pick the setting for whatever lighting situation you are in and see how that works... if it doenst look right, try another. Eventually youll figure it out. Another way to fix it is in post processing (ie "photoshop" and using a white balance calibration card (which is what I do).

If your pictures are not sharp it could be because the focus of the shot was off... or resizing it dulled the picture. The first one can be fixed by uh, focusing better... the second one can be fixed by sharpening in photoshop. I personally sharpen all my pictures a bit because I shoot in RAW, which does not apply any sharpening like point and shoot cameras do (has to be done in post processing for me).

Composition - ie "Framing the shot". This takes some practice for the most part but I will show you how I generally do things. Some of the things I make sure to get are full body shots, head shots, side close ups, saddle close ups, tail shots and occasionally belly shots.

I generally try to get multiple headshot angles:





multiple full body angles (usually one directly overhead and one slanted):




Saddle close-up:



Tail Shots:




And Body Color pics (Different boas, didnt take any of the boa above in that session):




And then sometimes there will be oddball angles that work well:



Ya really just got to play around with composition. 80% of my pictures generally need cropping... When cropping just make sure the sides are even and keep the central focus on the boa.

I personally use Nikon Capture for post processing (because it reads Nikon raw files from my Nikon camera). But photoshop, photoshop elements, GIMP (Free one), and most other programs work fine for general stuff (resizing/cropping).

Indoor lighting - This can certainly be difficult. I use a $300 speedlight that shoots the flash up to the ceiling and bounces it back down to the boa. This seems to not wash out the color as much and gives a much softer look. Before having such a setup I honestly had fairly poor luck indoors. Best bet is likely to just use the flash and make sure the boa is not on a reflective surface. Many cameras out there have poor flash systems that expose incorrectly and end up blowing the highlights in the snake. If your camera takes poor pictures with the flash it would probably be best to find a window with good sunlight coming in or wait until you can go outside.

Outside in the Sun - Time of day can be a big factor here. When the sun is directly overhead it lights up the top of the boa excellent, but the sides are shadowed. The best time to go out is when the sun is at a 45 degree angle. In this shot below you can see the side of the boa is well lit up, I was late in the day taking these pictures so the sun was at more like a 30 degree angle:



Some people also have great luck shooting in the shade while its sunny ... or under cloud cover. I personally have had the best results in direct sunlight. Auto white balance is also not generally an issue in bright sunlight.

For backgrounds, both indoors and out, you want something thats not going to be overly reflective from multiple angles and create "hot spots". Some of the best shots indoors ive seen are from Celia and her white melamine... having such a background really makes the boa stand out. Outdoors I like taking them on wood decks... although you really cant go wrong with most anything as long as the boa does not blend in.

A lesson in photography basics

This can get somewhat advanced... if it seems like too much just set your camera to "auto" and you should be alright .

Depth of field... meaning how much depth is in focus... is determined soley by the aperature. This is rated in F numbers. The higher the F number, the more depth of field. So we want lots in focus, right? So lets raise that really high... the problem is doing so requires the shutter speed to be slowed further and further... which can cause motion blur and camera shake (ie not a clear/in focus picture). Assuming we want the most depth of field possible (to a certain degree... eventually you loose sharpness if you go too high), in every situation we want to raise the F number as high as we can without having to use a shutter speed so low that it causes blur.

There is an "aperature priority" mode on just about every camera... use it and raise the F number for more depth of feild. It will automaticly adjust the shutter speed to expose the picture correctly. If you notice blur... keep lower the F number until you dont.

I shoot in aperature priority mode exclusively outdoors.

There is also shutter priority, which is used to control movement... something we dont need to use when taking pictures of boas (unless you're trying to get it striking a rat and you want to freeze the picture or something... in which case youd want a really high shutter speed).

Other then those two P mode is the way to go... P mode is usually fully auto but with all the menu options unlocked.

Hosting and posting pictures

I use photobucket. They seem to have consistant servers and is cheap (can use it for free). www.photobucket.com

After they are uploaded at photobucket use: picture link here (without the spaces) tags in the thread to post the picture(s).

My basic photography workflow

This may seem like alot but I can get it all done in 15 - 45 minutes depending on the situation.

1. Take pictures - Usually 100 ish per session. I take pictures of my whibal white balance card often for calibration later.

2. Scan through the pictures and pick out my favorite shots covering the compositions I want (Head Shot, Full Body Shot, Body Color Shot, Tail Shot, etc).

3. Load the pictures (RAW files in my case) one by one into nikon capture and calibrate white balance. Then crop and save as jpg.

4. Reload all the jpged files into nikon capture and resize to 800 pixel width and sharpen using unsharp mask. Then save as medium sized file jpgs.

5. Load into photobucket and post.

Well, that covers most everything. I will certainly elaborate on whatever is needed if you (or anyone) has further questions.
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Take Care,

-Ryan Homsey

www.topnotchboas.com

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