Pagona (Bearded Dragon)
Apr, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken while visiting the Australian Reptile Park on the central coast of New South Wales, Australia. It's one of my favorite animal parks to visit due to the wide variety of native and foreign wildlife, reptiles and insects on display. The park is isolated in the mountains near Brisbane Waters National Park west of Gosford, so there is always the opportunity to see wildlife and reptiles wandering into the area from the National Park.Time
This photo was taken just before mid-day. The weather was sunny with periods of cloud cover. We had been browsing around the park for around an hour when i spotted the Pagona (bearded dragon) climbing up the side of some bush rock.Lighting
The sun had just broken out from behind a large cloud. As more and more of the sun began to appear, the rock that the lizard was climbing on began to shine brighter until the point where it became a light grey colour. The lighter parts of the rock did prove a challenge to get correct due to over exposure but after some reconfiguring of the settings and patients from the reptile, i was able to capture a great image.Equipment
I used my Canon EOS 7D, Canon 70-200 f/4 L USM Lens with a ND2 polarizing filter. Whenever photographing small and medium sized wildlife close up, this is my ideal camera/lens configuration.Inspiration
I really enjoy Photographing wildlife but reptiles are a personal favorite. They come in many different shapes, sizes and colours. Whilst in the sun, lizards don't mind posing for photo's either. Sometimes they can be found quiet easily and sometime its difficult but i guess I'm lucky this on found me so i didn't want to let the oppertunity pass me by.Editing
Yes. I always leave my cameras sharpness setting to it's default setting and sharpen the images on PC. The reason i do this is to minimize the affects of noise in the image when taking images with a slow shutter speed without a tripod.In my camera bag
My Bag of choice is the Lowepro Vertex 300 AW. Currently i have a canon EOS 7D, Canon 1100D, EFS 18-55, Canon 70-200 f/4 L USM, Tamron AF 18-200 f/3.5-6.3, Sigma 120-400mm F4.5-5.6 HSM, spare battery, cleaning kit, shutter release remote and tripod.Feedback
The one piece of advise i would give is to carefully monitor the exposure and ISO. play particular attention to the image as a whole and not just the object you're focusing on. This will also come into play when photographing wildlife in motion as the subject of the image can move to or through areas with different light exposure.
