Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here are a few of shot of my boa constrictor morphs. I used a canon 20D with an 420ex flash bounced into a silver umbrella. The boas are on black velvet. I shot them jpeg format and only cropped them. I have not done any other editing other than blacking out a few hot spots in the black velvet background. I believe the setting were manual 1/60th f11. tell me what you think?

Christian

Christian,

Nice work. The reflector gave nice even lighting from the left.

However, the unidirectional lighting gives a rather harsh look. It works on some of them, but on others it doesn't work for me. I find it a little harsh on the first albino shot and the whole body salmon (?) shot.

I think you might improve these shots by putting an additional reflector on the right side (opposite the flash). This might be better, although it will change to appearance of the shot.

For a reflector, you could buy one of those collapsible silver reflector disks or simply crumple up some aluminum foil and then reopen it and tape/glue it to some cardboard. A big piece of white paper also does the job.

Place the reflector opposite the flash a little further from the snake. This will give a little fill to the other side and help remove the harshness of the one sided lighting.

Also, if I can, I prefer to have the light coming from the face side of the animal, not behind, like in the Salmon boa shot.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

Thank you for the reflector ideas, i will try it and post more pics. Thank you for your kinds words and the advise.

Christian
>>San Antonio, Texas

Hey Christian. I dislike the last three, but the first three are absolutely fantastic! Great shots, understanding of depth of field, and composure.

Keep it up.
Email/message me with a website if you have one:

willhayward@exiledphotography.com
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CANADIAN CHAMELEONS