Never work with animals
Monday was quite a demanding day on the photography front. I had to photograph a Chameleon, spider and snake. The old adage ‘never work with animals’ is so true! There is always an element of unpredictability and a lot of patience is needed to get what you want. My experience of photographing animals in a controlled lighting environment goes back a few years, when I photographed a variety of ‘creatures’ for a major advertising campaign . Therefore, I had a good idea of what to expect. We started with a male Panther Chameleon, who was very tame and manageable. The only downside was he did not display his best colours, I guess under the pressure of being in a very different environment he was a bit ‘camera shy’. As we were trying to create a virtual tour of each animal, the shots composed of various close ups and details. Later we would change the lighting to photograph the animals from underneath. The lighting was an honeycomb from the left hand side, a strip light from above and a another strip light to the right. Also, used a ring flash for the ultra close ups.The Chameleon was an easy subject, it settled happily on a small branch and moved slowly enough to keep focus. Most of the time I used my Mamiya 645 AFD with a 120 mm macro lens and a no 1 and no 2 extension tube, depending on how close I needed to get in. Depth of field was not an issue as it was nice to have a good focus fall off, to draw the eye to the focussed details. Most of the time I was shooting at around f18. I do not like to close down too much with this lens as it starts to go beyond its optimum performance, which is noticeable when shooting with digital. The next creature was a Mexican Red Knee Tarantula, which was quite hand-able to photograph We tried several other types of large spiders but they just wanted to run off the set. I had to get some ultra close ups, so this is where the 65mm macro and Canon EOS 1DS mk2 was used. This lens is incredible for macro work and for the photographs of the spiders eyes and fangs came into its own. I also used the ring flash to push a bit more light into the picture, which at such close distances would be difficult with just side lighting. This lens requires a lot of concentration in focusing, the image in the viewfinder is quite dim and too minimise vibration, especially at x3 magnification and above you need to lock up the mirror first. The animal handler held the spider on its the legs so we could get a close up of the fangs. To achieve focus I got him to move the spider slowly towards the lens until it was pin sharp. Sounds a bit hit and miss but it worked a treat! The snake was next, again we were looking for a selection of features including scales, eye, spurs, nostrils and overall pictures. We had a couple of Boa Constrictors to work with, a young one which was about 70 cm long and an adult at around 1.8 metres. I chose the larger one as i thought It would be better for the pictures. However, as soon as it was placed on the background it just wanted to ‘escape’, whatever the animal handlers tried it just did not work. The only photograph we used it for was for the close up of one if its spurs [ What was once in it s evolution history, where it had limbs ]. The animal handlers had to hold the snake very firmly for this shot and struggled to do so, it was amazing to see how much strength a a 1.8 metre snake had! We succeeded and put the snake away and for the other pictures used the far more manageable smaller Boa Constrictor. This was so much easier to work with and stayed in position to be photographed.
From underneath
A complete set change to photograph the animals from underneath. This is the part I had been really looking forward to, as something I had not done commercially. A few days previously I had done a few test shots with this set up, so I knew it would work. It is best not to leave anything to chance on the day, especially when time is so tight. I placed a large piece of strengthened glass on some trestles and used a strip light as the main light and some fill from a medium sized softbox and a reflector at the rear of the set for additional fill to help ‘bounce’ the light around. About 2 Metres above the glass, I clamped into position a large white board which was lit by 2 flash heads with spill kills. This in effect would be the white background as seen from camera position. We started with the spider, got some reasonable shots, but from underneath was not very colourful and quite dark. Next came the snake and finally the Chameleon. I knew the moment the Chameleon was on the set that he was the perfect subject for this type of lighting, as very little of him was directly in contact with the glass and thus was able to light him well from underneath. He stayed absolutely motionless as I lay down below the glass and hand held the camera with my Mamiya 645 AFD and 80 mm digital lens. I captured several images and then checked them for exposure and sharpness on my laptop. I felt really pleased with out come and after a long and intense day, it had made it all worthwhile. Must say thanks to Steve of Emerald Exotics for the use and handling of his reptiles
