Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This year's hatch is about half finished and it's been a great year. Here's a photo of one of this year's newly hatched cinctum for you to enjoy. The "super cinctum" from the cover of my book sired this little fella. I can't wait to see how it grows out and if it develops papa's electric pink color.

Mark

DrSeward.com

Here's the cinctum that sired the hatchling in the above photo.

Mark

DrSeward.com

n/p

As always nice work, incredible color...
What kind of lighting do you use for your pics? They just seem to pull out the true colors.
Robert

Thanks Robert,

I use a studio flash in a softbox. I find that reptiles, in general, photograph well under a softbox. It eliminates the kind of specular replections off the scales that can happen with a point-source light (especially apparent on reptiles with dark scales like Gilas).

Gilas (especially hatchlings) can be very tough to photograph well because of the contrast--very black scales against light scales. If you expose for the light part, you loose detail in the blacks. Likewise, if you expose for the black, you blow-out the highlights. A softbox helps this alot.

Also, any time you can get the lightsource away from the camera, it helps the image a lot.

Mark

What is that? Is that lighting or just a white box?
Thanks for the info I do like to take pics just would like to do it better..
Robert

A soft box is a light modifier used in photography (also used for lighting in video and films) to soften a light source (it prevents hard-edged shadows). The softbox that I am using has a surface of about 30X40 inches. The flash unit fits to the back of the softbox and modifies the light from the single point of light at the flash to a large diffuse source of light at the front surface of the softbox. Does that make any sense?

If I were to recommend something to improve photographic technique for shooting herps it would be those two things. Namely, get the light source off the camera (don't depend of the camera's flash) and soften the light. You could accomplish those two points by shooting outside in sunshine with the sunlight filtered through a white sheet--same principle.

A studio flash with a softbox is probably more trouble than most would care to go through, but it is really quite simple and can have a huge impact on the quality of the image. I use a digital SLR camera, but the same can be accomplished with most point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Mark

DrSeward.com

That makes sense..

Beautiful baby Mark

Very nice Mark, that sire is off the charts.
Here are some colors from the Baboquivaris.

Cheers
Brett