Ssssssnakes

Friday, August 7, 2009 was "Dollar Day" at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Perfect moment to grab the camera and grab some inexpensive shots! =]

Being interested in venomous creatures, these caught my eye:

1.

looks like a pygmy rattler in the first shot, and the second looks to be eyelash viper, alwyas bright ones. The hardest part i find with zoo setting is find a spot with clean glass.. and a decent backround for the subject. one of my favs from the louisville zoo. hope ya dont mind., gaboon vipers are evil looking vipers. keep up the good work,
mike

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mikeb540 wrote in post #8423561
looks like a pygmy rattler in the first shot, and the second looks to be eyelash viper, alwyas bright ones. The hardest part i find with zoo setting is find a spot with clean glass.. and a decent backround for the subject. one of my favs from the louisville zoo. hope ya dont mind., gaboon vipers are evil looking vipers. keep up the good work,
mike

You are absolutely right about the glass situation. Especially, during the "dollar day" festival at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, MI. The Dollar Day brings out the kids [It's considered a kid's day], who seem to enjoy smearing their snot-filled fingers across the display glass! Another hard thing to get around is the lack of light. To get the viper, I actually placed my lens against the display glass, using the display for stability. I had to shoot at a very slow speed (1/16th of a second, if I remember correctly???), so I needed all of the stability I could get. The glass did a great job acting as a tripod analogue, allowing me to hold the camera steady enough to grab the shot. Good thing, too! The lighting was beautiful in that case!

BTW... your shot is sweet! Up close and personal!

Very true.. i thought about taking a rag and a tiny sprayer of cleanier so if i found a good subject worth doing the extrea work for, but i didnt haha the day i went it was crazy busy and i had to squeeze my way to the good displays. I worked at a park that had a nature center ( park is closed now:cry so i got to try diffenernt ideas for dealing with glass seen below. and shoot at an angle while using flash isnt so bad,, all the zoo snake rooms are dark but i flash until they tell me to stop. this one was shot at an angle, and if the backround was better would look much better, sorry for off topic I to am a snake nut
mike

ps, this is where i debate about getting a big zoom or a macro... big zoom for distance on wild critters or macro wide for the through glass.. ahhhh

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mikeb540 wrote in post #8424734
Very true.. i thought about taking a rag and a tiny sprayer of cleanier so if i found a good subject worth doing the extrea work for, but i didnt haha the day i went it was crazy busy and i had to squeeze my way to the good displays. I worked at a park that had a nature center ( park is closed now:cry so i got to try diffenernt ideas for dealing with glass seen below. and shoot at an angle while using flash isnt so bad,, all the zoo snake rooms are dark but i flash until they tell me to stop. this one was shot at an angle, and if the backround was better would look much better, sorry for off topic I to am a snake nut
mike

ps, this is where i debate about getting a big zoom or a macro... big zoom for distance on wild critters or macro wide for the through glass.. ahhhh

Ah... the age old argument. Macro or distance? heh heh heh I am torn by that very same argument, at the moment. I am now shooting a maximum of 200mm on a full-frame sensor. That is quite a bit shorter than the 300mm on a 1.6x crop that I'm used to. That said, I am currently debating my options: a 400mm or 500mm piece of glass? Or do I go with a nice macro lens? Luckily, I have a little time to consider my options, as I can't afford either one, at this point in time!

710 Studio wrote in post #8427094
Ah... the age old argument. Macro or distance? heh heh heh I am torn by that very same argument, at the moment. I am now shooting a maximum of 200mm on a full-frame sensor. That is quite a bit shorter than the 300mm on a 1.6x crop that I'm used to. That said, I am currently debating my options: a 400mm or 500mm piece of glass? Or do I go with a nice macro lens? Luckily, I have a little time to consider my options, as I can't afford either one, at this point in time!

I know the feeling, i got to shoot with a 70-200 L 2.8 on my camera sooo.. yea the want list got bigger. but i am stuck between waiting and upgrading camera bodies next spring,, and going wide angle. theres just to much good gear to not beable to buy .. I would like to get a 50D.
mike

Nice pictures, that's a good idea, I'm going to walk into a pet store one day and just start shooting away!