My weekly submission:
This photo was taken with the usual equipment (N70, 100mm macro, flash). Handheld. Fuji Superia 400. Scanned from a negative. Any comments?

-- Joe Cheatwood (cheatwoo@ufl.edu), December 29, 1998

Answers

It's a good head and "shoulders" shot. I do wish the lighting was softer and I always have problems with pictures of animals I'm not familiar with when the image cuts the rest of the body off. I'd really like to see the whole thing.

I know! They often just won't hold still and curl up into a satisfyingly picturesque pose when you want them to. Usually they are stretched out linearly and heading for the underbrush.

Frank

-- Frank Kolwicz (bb389@lafn.org), December 29, 1998.

Frank,
Thank you very much for your reply. This place has become as dead as a graveyard for nearly anyone posting anything other than landscapes or the like, so I appreciate your response very much.

As for the rest of you, anyone else out there willing to submit a crtique would be greatly appreciated. I can't believe the (near) complete lack of response to this and other wildlife posts. It hardly makes it worth taking the time to post if only one person comments. If you people are trying to create an exclusive community, let it be known know so that everyone else who is here to get honest critques of their work so that they can stop wasting their time and post at Sunrise exclusively.

--Joe

-- Joe Cheatwood (cheatwoo@ufl.edu), January 03, 1999.

Ok.

Exposure looks good. DOF is interesting, with the background blurred and the foreground in focus. Was this on purpose? I like it better than if the foreground was blurred and the background was in focus, but I probably would have tried to blur both a bit. The green pine needle and deciduous leaf are a bit distracting. The shadow under his head looks a liitle odd too.

Some of the out of focus needles are bunched in the same direction as the lizard. I like it.

Good catchlight, nice 'smile' (did you give him a cricket?). Overall a nice portrait of a snake, err, I mean lizard. Where's his legs?!

Thanks for posting, good luck.

-- Tom Van Veen (tvanveen@accmail.umd.edu), January 04, 1999.

Tom,
Thank you for your comments. No, I didn't give him any food. This is a wild animal and this picture was taken on the floor of a Florida pine hammock.

As for his legs: glass lizards (Ophisaurus sp.) simply don't have them! They lost them some time ago. The lizard in this picture is an Eastern glass lizard, Ophisaurus ventralis.

-- Joe Cheatwood (cheatwoo@ufl.edu), January 04, 1999.