Photographing Amphibians and Reptiles
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Amphibians and reptiles in the UK are generally not too small for easy photography, but they have one disadvantage that applies to many close up subjects – they are three dimensional. Frogs and toads are similar enough in all three dimensions to make depth of field always difficult to achieve. Reptiles are more or less long and thin, and can in principle be focussed by making the film plane parallel to the animal. Asking a snake to lie in a straight line is not an option, and even if you wait for this to happen by chance, you then have a rectangular photgraph with a long thin subject. Only if you wish to illustrate a travelling snake is this a good idea. A snake is usually more or less wiggly or coiled, making it three dimensional. Unless it is on a steep bank you are unlikely to be able to get above it to make its plane parallel with that of the film. So aperture selection is crucial. As always, the eyes must be sharply focussed.
Most of this section is about adders, with a little about frogs, but much of the material is more widely applicable.
There is no magic formula for photographing reptiles. An SLR is probably the best type of camera. Anything bigger than 35 mm will be heavy and bulky, but can give fine results. With any camera, the results will of course depend on the skill of the photographer. It is a good idea to examine every slide or negative with a strong lens, to check the focus, and to look critically at the composition. Try imagining that each picture is to illustrate something about the subject, or that it is to be good enough to publish. This may help to improve the results.
Autofocus is very useful, provided that you use it to focus on the correct part of the subject. This is especially difficult when there are leaves or grass stems between subject and camera. The head and eyes must always be in focus. It is not always easy to focus on the whole of a snake, because it is so long. Different parts of the adder may be at significantly different distances from the camera, causing problems with depth of field. The necessary small aperture may be incompatible with a suitable shutter speed. Even when snakes are coiled up the depth of field may be quite large. An apparently attractive shot of two or more adders together may be impossible for the same reason. Don’t forget that depth of field is determined by the aperture, and by how big the image is compared with the object. The type of lens is irrelevant.
A possible solution is to use a camera with built-in flash, though the lighting effect can look very artificial. Grasses and leaves that are closer to the camera than the subject is will spoil the shot by being brightly lit. In a naturally lit shot they will be merely out of focus and may not matter so much. TTL flash metering is very useful. Most SLRs require a relatively slow shutter speed for the flash. On a bright day this may let in so much ambient light that the flash may have no effect. A powerful hammerhead flash may be used, but this is bulky for use in the field.
Another method is to make a light guide to boost the light output from a built-in flash, by redirecting stray light that would otherwise miss the subject. The guide can be made using a rectangular cone of white card, lined with aluminised mylar. The four sides form four images of the flash, so that the total brightness would be five times the original brightness, but for the imperfection of the reflections. However, about two stops may be gained in this way. An alternative method is to use one or two plastic fresnel lenses may be used at the front. These are sold as flat reading lenses, and should be cut to size. The grooved surface should face away from the flash tube, and the smooth surface should face towards it. The best results will be obtained by careful calculation using the focal length of the camera lens as input. Up to three stops can be gained in this way. The narrower the beam of light, the greater the gain, but also the greater need for accurate alignment to illuminate the whole frame. You could use a light guide on a hammerhead flash, but the offset of the head from the axis of the lens may make it difficult to direct the beam of flash light at the subject.
This picture shows the effect of a light guide for a focal length of 210 mm. The photograph was taken with a 70 mm lens. The yellow line shows the area that should be illuminated. The area is a little too small, and a little off centre, so the guide needed adjusting.
Let’s take an example. Suppose you have a camera with built-in flash of guide number of 11 for 100 ISO film. At 1 metre from an adder, which is closer than you can normally get without disturbing the adders, you will need f/11, and at 1.4 metre about f/8. On a sunny day you would might need 1/100 sec at f/8 to f/16 for a natural light exposure, so at 1.5 metre the flash may be overcome by the sunlight, even if your camera can accept flash at 1/100 sec. If your light guide can gain you two stops you can use f/16 at 1.4 metre, and now the flash may be brighter than the sun. It will definitely fill in the shadows. If the flash is not much stronger than the sun, and the subject moves, you will get a fuzzy ghost image with the sharp one. You really need to gain another stop with a better light guide. If the day is dull, everything is easier for flash. But if it is too dull, the adders will not appear.
The choice of lens is a matter for the individual. A lens that can be used for other subjects is clearly desirable. A 70 mm to 210 mm zoom is a type that offers versatility, but you will often be using it near its minimum working distance, where the focus might not be as sharp as it is at infinity. A fixed focus lens of 180 mm or 200 mm might be preferred, possibly even a macro type, which will be valuable for other nature photographs. A 90 mm or 100 mm macro will very often be too short. Great attention to technique is required. Depth of focus is often a problem, and so is camera shake and subject movement.
A tripod is possibly impractical, except for basking adders, but a monopod may help, even if it cannot always be planted on the ground. Adders are generally quite dark, and it is perhaps a good idea to set the camera for half a stop of over-exposure if you are using a general metering method. Spot focussing is possible, but you may not have time to set it up. Bracketing will use up film very quickly, and you don’t want to be changing film at a crucial time, though in the first half of a film this will not be a worry.
Don’t be too greedy for magnification – you will have greater trouble with depth of field. And the adders are moving they may partially leave the frame, especially during contests. The part that leaves the frame will of course be the head. During these contests the flash may be essential, though it is sometimes possible to photograph the adders during pauses in the action. These are difficult to predict, though they may be more likely during a long bout.
Don’t be so keen to get a photograph that you don’t enjoy seeing the adders properly. If you have seen several contests you may feel that you can afford to concentrate more on getting pictures, and not so much on seeing exactly what is going on. Attention to surroundings and background is vital in getting the best possible pictures. A distracting object may sometimes be eliminated by a small movement of the camera or a small adjustment of the zoom. The adder’s eye or a pair of the head will often be behind a leaf or stalk. All movements of the photographer should be slow and smooth. Remember always that although they are deaf, they can detect vibration if you tread too heavily.
It is a good idea, when a suitable shot offers itself, to start at a fair distance from the adder, and then work slowly towards it, taking several pictures. In this way, if the adder moves before the best position is reached, at least one or two shots have will have been taken. The camera should be lined up initially with the final shot in mind. Then all movements can be directly towards the adder, making it less likely to react than if sideways movements are made. Once the adder has raised its head you need to proceed very carefully, because you have been spotted. It can be very difficult to move neatly while retaining balance, particularly if the ground is awkward. If you are kneeling, moving on stony ground, or among brambles, thistles or nettles, can be troublesome, and you will realise how much better equipped for this the adder is than you are.
If you cannot get any closer, perhaps because of the terrain, or perhaps because you are nervous of disturbing the animal, you can gain a bit more if you have an autofocus camera. You can slowly move the camera away from you and towards the subject, keeping the subject in the auto-focus zone. As long as you can still see the subject at all in the view-finder, you can press the button and hope that the auto-focus does the job. Of course you have little control over composition, but by this stage you are probably only including a part of the subject anyway. With a camera with multiple auto-focus zones, this may well not work, because the camera uses the eye-position to choose the focus-zone.
Keep checking on leaves and grasses that might be in front of the subject. They may look fuzzy or even invisible in the viewfinder, but when the lens is stopped down for the exposure the offending object may look much sharper in the photograph. And remember that the nearer the camera, the brighter an object is, when flash is used. This can lead to very unnatural results when the picture includes even a fairly small depth.
For frogs and toads in water, the effect of the water may be to reflect some rays that are detected by the meter, but not by the eye, resulting in under-exposure. In this case, it is a good idea to site the camera to over-expose by one stop.
Not one of the photographs shown here is satisfactory. All of them could have been a lot better. Every time you take a photograph you should try hard to make the best of what the scene offers. You may be concerned that in moving to a slightly better position you may disturb the adder and lose the picture, or that by delaying, you may lose it because the adder decides to go elsewhere. Then you have to make decisions. It is amazing how many times the adder’s head is partly hidden by a leaf or a twig. Yes, photography can be a frustrating business. Always try not to disturb the adders too much. After watching some adders, try to remember how many you disturbed and how many you did not. Try to minimise the first number and maximise the second. Also try to remember how many you saw before they saw you.
Just as important as equipment is knowledge – the more you know about an animal, the more likely you are to get good photographs. A simple example is ambient temperature. Early in the day, when the adders have just emerged, they will be more sluggish than they are later, when they have warmed up. And if you alarm a snake late in the day, it may not come out again. Early in the day it will sooner or later come out again to gain more energy. But if it has several entrances to its home you might not see it.
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