Lizard Series – Part I

what a wonderful image this is , excellent colors and techs

Lovely result from a walk in the park. The colors are spectacular -- was it breeding season, or are they always like that?

I'm following up with a common US snake, not as striking or with such a poetic description, but different anyway.

Beautiful shot! I really like the simplicity and the color

I find lizard quite difficult subjects to make pleasing photographs with, partly due to their elongated shape. You managed to make a technically very good image of a beautiful specimen here Ashley. The uniform surroundings ensure that all the attention goes to the lizard, however, that plain flat unnatural surface he is on also makes this a bit of a boring shot to me to be honest. This could be 'broken' a bit by cropping some from the OOF bottom as the Pano shape will go well with the body shape.

Thanks for taking the time to view and leave comments Harshad, David, Mark, and Vincent :^)

David: Unfortunately I really don't know anything about the breeding habits of this one or Lizards as a whole. I actually took this shot back in 2008 with my first Canon camera (actually a 40D, not the 7D I mistakenly wrote in the shooting data!), and this was the first time I've ever come across this species and, sad to say, I've never seen another.

Vincent: Yep, have to agree the surroundings, while greatly helping to attract attention to the subject, are far from exciting or interesting, and thanks for the suggestion of making a pano of it :^)

HI Ashley,

My taste always runs towards simple images, and you can't get much simpler than this - so in that regard the image works for me. Of course, the colours are fantastic - and to me that's what this image is mostly about.

One personal preference issue: with such a homogeneous foreground/background the distinction between the OOF zones and the band of focus in the middle is quite noticeable. As I mentioned in another post recently (Steve Kaluski's excellent image of a grizzly cub fishing), I personally find multiple out-of-focus zones that stretch from edge-to-edge in an image a bit distracting and - for me - displeasing. I'm referring only to situations where there's an out-of-focus foreground, a distinct in-focus band in the mid-zone, and then another OOF background band and they stretch all the way across the frame. To me this is a bit too unnatural (i.e., an artifact of the photographic process) and really screams "telephoto lens" just a tad too loudly - which means that TO ME the image becomes more about technical issues than appreciation of the subject. I DO think careful use of out-of-focus zones can enhance an image, but it's really tough to successfully pull off an image with multiple out-of-focus zones. In this case the extreme simplicity of the environment (could it be more homogenous??) makes it even tougher (hard to hide those bands!). What to do? Well, ultimately one would have to stop down quite a bit here to render more of the background/foreground in focus. Your subject might be static enough to allow a very slow shutter speed, but obviously you couldn't hand-hold the shot (tripod time!)...

Note that I'm being super-picky here - but I know your shots are important to you and I thought you'd appreciate the detailed feedback. I do want to reiterate that this is really a personal preference issue, so feel absolutely free to disregard the feedback if you like the look of the multiple out-of-focus zones!

Cheers...thanks for sharing this - looking forward to Part II (and III??)

Brad

Many thanks for taking the time to explain all this Brad, as it's an alternative perspective that, until Vincent pointed it out and went further in-depth, I never really thought about before.

Having said that, perhaps on a subconscious level the thought was already germinating, hence the reason why I cropped this in a "rule of thirds" kind of way, having the larger portion of OOF area set at the top of the frame.

As mentioned above, I took this shot back in 2008, and it was one of my first attempts to shoot in manual, so I really didn't know what I was doing; quiet frankly, I'm surprised this one came out as well as it did.

Although I'll probably leave this one as is (cropping more from the bottom would bring the subject too close to the edge for my taste, and slicing off from the top will no doubt exacerbate the banding issue more than anything else), I greatly appreciate Vincent and you pointing this out to me, as for future reference I'm sure it will serve me well ... as long as I can get the subject to stay in place long enough for me to select a more favourable DOF setting.

All being well, in this series they'll be Parts II, III, IV and V; I'm going for a graduating effect, taking you from the smallest up to the largest of Lizards I have on file :^)

Wishing you all a great weekend :^)

Wow colors on this critter Ashley, great details and I like your comp.
Like that head up pose, nice use of F/5.6

Very colorful little fella you captured here Ashley. I do wish it had more of a natural setting....looks like it is on the asphalt? Anyhow, still a good capture. Nice angle and colors.

Thanks for taking the time to look at and comment on me colourful little Lizard Howard and Kurt :^)