I whittled 500 pictures of my garters down to 81. This took me three days to photograph, delete, crop and such... I like the plain white background because now, you get to view my snakes as true to life as I can possibly get. The real difference is the bulbs I used for lighting, those reveal ones from GE give you very good color results and do not give any kind of cast to the photos, so very little altering is needed and it's a real time saver.
These are all of my garters, but I also have some pictures of other snakes that I will be placing in my regular "Shannon's Snakes Thread". I hope you enjoy! My favorite group of shots is my similis, cause hes so darned mean, which makes for great shots with attitude!
The first group I will show off are very special and dear to my heart, my "morph" easterns that I have collected from the wild myself. These are without a doubt my favorite garters ever... as they each have a story behind them, and without my awesome boyfriend I would have none of them. There is nothing like being so lucky as to find such amazing specimens! Sometimes I ask myself... why me? How was I so lucky?! The hypo was enough, but then last year, finding the flame after making my boyfriend move ALL those tires with no results until the last one, made me feel humbled!
Here is my "hypo" (sometimes i dont know what to call it) female, Most of you have heard lots about her, and this year my male eastern is trying with all of his little heart to breed her. he never stops so I am REALLY hoping she will produce this year. She produced a small clutch of the summer I found her, 3 babies just did not thrive and the remaining 1.1 freakishly died together... how upsetting that was...
And now is my juvenile female flame. I also have two CB flames from Scott Felzer, unrelated as well. I am going to look for a male on the same farm this year to breed her, I would like to keep her bloodline pure, just think, a whole 'nother line of flame! (it would be nice to find one of her siblings up there, if there is on flame there has got to be more!) What I love about it is how the red contrasts against the greenish blue of the top of her! Her belly is very red also!
Next is Marigold, my orange-blushed girlie. also caught on the same day as my flame on the farm. The first time, she got away when I went to grab a pile of 6 huge females, me and my boyfriend looked at each other like WAIT WHERES THE ORANGE ONE! Went back to the tire an hour later to put the other females back after photographing, and she was there!
here is my Rusty red female, Also collected on the farm. She produced half normal babies, half that had red labial markings and odd coloration. Sadly, NONE of her babies that i held onto thrived.. they pretty much refused to eat and digest their food.. not sure why that was but hopefully it is not genetic.
Now, for the rest of my T.s. Sirtalis!
Male Carteret County Erythristic Het Schuett Albino
The Female
Female Florida Blue
Male Florida Blue
Male Eastern.... nicknamed Humper fo his ongoing attempts at my hypo female LOL!
Normal female, sibling to the previous male, these were supposed to be checkereds but the guy was misinformed!
Olivia, my youngest brother drake found he dehydrated and almost dead in a field, and he brought her to me. I spoon-fed her water in order to save her life, and my brother insisted that she stays with us and she is "his" snake. Will probably use her to breed to the male flame.
Brighteyes, my second lawnmower survivor (Stubby my other has passed away), found her with deep wounds to her back that were only covered by a thin layer of "Skin"... she's very dark, after I healed her wounds I set her free only to have my brothers find her and bring her back to me a month or two later. Boy was I suprised to see her again! Now... she is here to stay... she enjoys being handed pinkies way too much
a portion of her scars
