Slithering Subjects

Okay, all. Be kind and spill your secrets. How in the world do you get your snakes to stay still for a photo op? I swear, my girls are camera-phobes. I'm always photographing their behinds as they are slithering away from me. When I got my new camera, I had idyllic visions of the snakes flicking their tongues a few cm from the camera lens as my super-macro setting took stunning photos of snake faces. All I get are photos of snake butts.

Well I usually hold the snakeletts with one hand and take rapid fire pics with the other, I usually end up taking 80 or so of each snake and out of those there are only about 5 that I like that are in focus or have interesting visual elements, that's why digital cameras are so nice, keep the good delete the bad.

Thanks. Yay for digital cameras!

Nothing wrong with a nice piece of tail!

Yeah, but they're all blurry!

I usually make a jungle gym for them. With trees and baskets. Different things that a snake would like to investigate. Then just be snapping away. Some people use a blue bowl. I have used a blue sheet it does calm them down and they don't move. I don't know why but they usually don't move. With the hatchlings sometimes I will put my hand over them and once I have the camera ready take my hand off and snap away. You will take bunch of pictures and only a few will be perfect but there are some of my secrets.

Hrm, I swear I have a picture somewhere...

Don't have time to dig it out right now though. Place a heavy bowl over your snake, let it sit for awhile (like maybe 5 min so bring a book maybe), uncover, and snap while they're still in that shocked "how DARE you uncover me!" phase.

Jessicat, I am going to try that! Thanks!

To get them to do this put them in a blanket or sock cover and hope you get lucky.

I agree with the others, cover them with a bowl or even a deli cup. Let them settle for just a minute works for me. have the camera ready in hand, and with the other hand remove the cup or bowl. Take as many pics as you can in that moment of confusion, then pick out the best pics of the group. You can repeat this process several times, it always seems to work. Another good technique is to use a picture program and crop your pictures so they look nice and centered. You can also use the crop feature to zoom in even more than the Macro lens gives you. For instance you can crop a picture of just the snakes head. Here's an example of cropping. It was taken on an orange tree so I did not use the cover technique, I just kept taking pics and repositioning the snake. I deleted tons of pics and kept only the ones I like.





Another technique that works well if the snake is a baby or neonite is to simply place it in a deli cup clear or white, and take pics of him in there. If he squirms too much cover the cup till he sttles down then remove the cover as before and shoot away!







Still another technique is to restrain the snake in one hand and take plenty pics. I use my fingers to pose the snake so as to show off certain features, like the belly for instance.