Hello Guys..
with Günters permission, i will post his tutorial on how to photograph a snake here...
thanks Günter!
Good morning Ladies & Gentlemen!
Somebody asked me to write a brief tutorial about snake shooting. Well, I'll break my promise not to write any more tutorials and here it is (the wordfile can be emailed, just send me a flickr mail with Your email address):
Snake Photography in Reptile Zoos
“Arghhh, who wants to do something weird like that?” You may ask. Thank You so much! Well, maybe somebody who
a) loves snakes (I’m an addict) or
b) loves nature photography (You guess right, I’m an addict) or
c) hast to much time (well, I don’t want to talk about that …)
Anyway, snake photography in the wildlife is a very risky thing, especially with venomous snakes but it is completely safe in controlled environments like reptile zoos. So let’s head on and see, how You can get those amazing snakemacros.
1. Foto permission
As everywhere when shooting make sure You are allowed to do so. Usually I ask when entering the zoo (and when You ask, always add “of course without flash!”) and until now it was never a problem. Please be aware that commercial use of the photos always needs a further (and written!) OK from the authorized zoo manager!
Usually I send them a CD with the shots some weeks later.
My first shooting were the typical “through-the-glass” photos but comes time, come contacts and sometimes, when no other people are in the zoo and You know the people working there because it is the 6th time You are photographing here, maybe a question like “Would You mind to take out this snake for a few shots?” can easily be fulfilled – if not You ask for a black mamba or philippine cobra or pets like that. The last one, a harmless milk snake (easily to be mixed up with the venomous coral snake) was so sweet wrinkling around my arm that I forgot to photograph …
As anywhere: be kind and friendly and You will be treated the same!
Ah, before I forget: it helps a lot if You know at least the most important things about snakes. So maybe invest in a good book, You will see, it is amazingly interesting!
2. Terrariums
Usually You will be happy to have that piece of glass beween You and the snake, especially if You are doing macros of mambas, rattlesnakes, lanceheads, vipers or something like that. Sadly, most of the time the glass has some disadvantages, that I want to point out now in brief:
The glass is dirty or scratched or both
This happens at least at the edges and in the lower part, where the glass is touche often by the visitors (“Ping ping, look at me little snake!” – You should avoid that, snakes do not like that so much) or from the zoo staff when opening and closing the terrarium or from the snake itself.
The dirt outside is not the problem. I use to have cleaning paper with me, like used for goggles and sunglasses. Well, sometimes the staff often looks a bit deranged but after a short explanation most of the time a short laugh about this crazy photographer is the acceptable reaction when I am kneeling there and cleaning the glass…
Scratches are simply a problem You can’t solve. So look for another terrarium or another place to shoot the snake in this terrarium or simply accept the poor result. BTW, the farther away the subject (snake) from the scratches and the nearer the camera to the scratches the less You will see it on the photos.
Dust inside the terrarium is another thing …
Reflections
You want to photograph through glass. Definitely this will not be a multicoated glass but cheap window glass or maybe some plastic. So You need to be aware of those reflections anytime. There are a couple of things You can do to avoid that:
o Control the first shot from any position in the monitor (You surely have a digital camera, right?)
o If reflections are visible, try to change your position
o If You need exactly this very position, then have look where the light source is located (reflections always need a light source) and darken it (e.g. ask Your wife/husband to cover it with her/his body) or remove it (shut off Your flash, You should not flash animals anyway) or move it to another place (e.g. if You shoot with an external light source)
o Even windows on a sunny day can be a big problem. Try to shoot with the window in some angle behind You
Snake at the terrarium borders
Such a lovely cotton mouth (btw.: this is a deadly snake) and she is always at the bottom of the cage swimming in her little pool (cotton mouth snakes love water).
Well, You can try to do some shoots and loads of photoshop to give her an acceptable background lateron or You’ll come back later. In fact: When I am doing reptile zoo photography I am always moving a lot and looking which snake is in position for a moment and which are not.
One possibility which will help sometimes is to open the aperture a lot and do a closeup which reduces the photoshop work for the background afterwards.
But in general: avoid photographing snakes when they are near the terrarium walls or the border. Usually this won’t result in acceptable photos.
One last tip, but if You are at least average intelligent, You do not need to read this:
Never open a terrarium Yourself!
3. The Gear
Nearly all of my snake shots were done with nothing more than the following equipment:
o Canon 5D
o Sigma 105/2.8 1:1 Macro lens
Sometimes I used additional light sources (see below) or monopods, but usually the above does it for me.
Maybe a faster Macro lens (USM or HSM) would be an improvement because I do use the AF and rarely focus manually but until now it was not that big problem for me.
With snakes outside their terrarium I’d prefer a longer telelens (20cm distance is not my primary goal when photographing venomous snakes) and then I’d like to use some extension tubes to get the macros.
4. Light situations
It would be too easy to photograph those handsome animals if light was bright and white. To separate the wheat from the chaff of the photographers, the reptile zoos tend to serve us low light situations. This means, that You have to be aware that 1/40s with f/4 and ISO 1600 is no exception for a snake shooting.
Otherwise the light is often a kind of fluorescent tube light and therefor a rather smooth light without hard shadows is what You will get.
Of course it is also from interest, how the ground of the terrarium is (light or dark, water or sand, …) how it is painted inside, how many plants are there, where the snake is, etc.
You also have to live with sometimes extrem colour casts due to the painted terrariums. I do not know why all these folks always paint their snake housings red to brown, but well …no colour cast that could not be eliminated in photoshop, right?
When I prepare for a shooting I always put a tripod and a monopod into my car and if light is too bad, I’ll take it out. But usually I try to do it freehanded as long as possible. This gives me more possibilites to quickly react on movements of the snakes.
Image stabilizers are useful with long exposition times but if the snake moves it won’t help You that much. So I decided to invest my money into a circular flash and a ringlight and that’s what the next point discusses:
5. Use of Flashes, Lamps and Ringlights
Flashes
Most animals do not like flashes and every photographer should respect this! For snakes it depends a lot on the species and of course on the circumstances. Bitis gabonica (Gaboon vipers) for example will possibly get a heart attack when flashed whereas a black mamba won’t care and will keep smiling (mambas always look for me like as they are smiling).
Anyway, I do not flash any animals, except the zoo personal is at my side and definitely allowes it and even then I do not really like it. Furthermore the shots tend to get flat if the distance is near and I like “living snakes” on my shots.
But if I flash then I use a macro ringflash and an additional slave flash from one side to give some plasticity. This makes necessary another helping hand, of course. I bought a cheap ETTL ringflash from poland at ebay, which costed some 110,- EUR and also a much cheaper slave flash (about 25,- EUR) which reacts just on the main flash and not on the preflashes.
Ringlights
If I need additional light, I prefer ringlights mounted on my lens. There is one from Soligor, about 100,- EUR, which gives a very soft (and weak) light and gives me maybe one EV (one stop) more light which is often enough.
Recently I bought at ebay another ringlight, LED type, which costed about 150,- EUR incl. P&P and this is incredibly bright: it gives me at the usual distance about 5 stops which is way enough (You come to 1/125s at ISO 200 with the light from 1/30 at ISO 1600 without the light at the same aperture!). In fact it is so bright and hard that I had to smooth it by attaching a milky peace of plexiglass over the LEDs. Otherwise the shadows would be to hard and the light to bright for sensible snakes.
Reflections
The problem with all these light sources is the reflection in the glass of the terrarium. But You can avoid this by using some angle when shooting. If this is not possible, shut off the light. Always control the photos after being taken. Reflections can easily be seen on the camera monitor but hardly be removed in photoshop.
6. Posing
You are used to command Your models in the studio? Well, of course this won’t work with snakes. The give a damn about Your wishes. I hardly know another animal which is so selfish as a snake. They do what they like, nothing else.
But You have two things You can do to influence the posings of the snakes:
First, be on the move between the terrariums. At one time, one snake will be in a great position, maybe five minutes later another at the other end of the room will be. So keep on looking and moving!
Secondly, ask the zoo personal if You can photograph when they handle the snakes for feeding, etc. Feeding is always a great thing top shoot! See below!
You should never knock on the glass or do something like that. It is forbidden and either the snakes nor the personel will like such behaviour. One day, a black & white cobra got angry when I was shooting it. Only my moves with the camera brought it in such rage that she attacked the glass between us. To avoid the snake being hurt I had to stop the shooting.
Some snakes react on photographers or especially light as I could realize. I made some good experiences here with boomslangs, leafgreen mambas, some cobras and some rattlesnakes. Others quickly moved away in their hideaways or simply did not care.
7. Snake Feedings
Most of the zoos offer guided feedings. Usually (with venomous snakes) this means:
The zoo personel feeds a snake with a mouse or little chicken and people is allowed to watch this from a safe distance. “Safe distance” means: photography is not really possible. But then the glass is closed and the snake will swallow the food and this is Your moment. Now You have some minutes to make a few real good shots.
If You know the personel by name from Your many visits at the zoo You can try to ask for a special feeding where just the snake, You and the zoo personel are involved. Maybe You will be allowed to get nearer then. Some snakes won’t attack or let me say: they won’t attack You but only the mouse.
8. Photoshop work
Snakeshots in a reptile zoo are often of a low contrast and definitely need a lot of photoshop work with levels, curves and of course cloning.
The procedure here is not very different zo the usual procedure for other photographs. Therefor I won’t bore You too much here.
The most important steps for me are:
a) Clone stamp the background (this is very often needed and also very often a lot of work). Of course I do this in a separate layer with layer masks.
b) Do some levels work. Also of course in a separate levels layer with masking to avoid blowing out whites.
c) Adjust the colours. Needed because the mixed light situations result often in strange colours and You should try to show the snakes in their “real” colours. As You may have already guessed, I use a layer for this.
d) Do the final curves work to get some more contrasts into the photo. Use a separate layer.
e) Sharpening. I usually sharpen with high pass filters and mask out everything what should not be sharpened.
f) Make a frame, if You like to.
Have fun and avoid being biten,
Guenter
Sun 18 May - 11:44