When it comes to choosing a background for your pictures, avoid using very dark or very light colors. Wanna know why? Your basic digital or film cameras measure the amount of light entering the lens and sets the exposure accordingly. If the majority of the shot consists of very dark or black areas, the camera will automatically over-expose the picture in order to compensate. The result is that everthing in the picture appears lighter in color. Blacks become dark grey. Creams become white, etc...The opposite is true when the majority of the shot is very light colored. The camera under-exposes the picture and everything appears darker.
The easy way to correct this is to use a background with an equal amount of light and dark objects. Gus's picture below of the Brazilian BCC is a great example. The colors you see on that animal are probably pretty darn close to what that snake actually looks like. In the other pictures you'll see shot with black backgrounds, the animal will usually appear washed out. In the pictures you'll see shot on very light or white backgrounds, the animal will appear darker.
If you insist on shooting on a black background, which does look nice when done right, there's two things you can do. The easy thing is to zoom in closer, so that less of the background is visible. The harder thing is to manually override the automatic exposere setting, and purposely under-expose the picture. The black will stay black, and your snake won't be washed out in the pic.
Here's two more quick tips:
Natural sunlight is always better than indoor light.
(Some nice digital cameras have settings that allow you to set the kind of lighting you're in....automatic, sunlight, cloudy, indoor tungsten, etc.)
Last but not least...If it's at all possible, TURN OFF THE FLASH.
If there's not enough light, you'll want to put the camera on a tripod or something to hold it absolutely still - otherwise camera shake will cause blurry pictures.
