10 years of photography: Get close! (How close is close enough?)

 "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." - Robert Capa

 There's two ways to get close to your subject. The first one is to use a long lens and to shoot from a decent distance from your subject. This is a good technique when your subject is shy or there's a risk that the critter you are photographing will get nasty and attack, sting or bite you. The other way, the one I prefer, is to physically get close the subject. With tiny little insects this isn't a problem, usually, but with bigger critters, such as snakes, lizards and others this may be a bit of a challenge.

    This Smooth Snake didn't go anywhere when I approached it. It's easy to shoot a mugshot of a snake when using a 150 mm macro lens and the subject is just eyeballing you with no intention of going anywhere.

Using a wide angle lens and getting really close to your subject will yield in even more interesting images, This way you can show, not only the subject, but also its habitat in a nice way. There is though a challenge you have to face when shooting closeups with a wide lens. You have to get pretty close of the animal for a good shot, but it's wort it.

So how close is close enough? You are close enough when your subject pops out, when there isn't any question about what is your main subject. You are probably too faraway if your subject wont be clear for the viewer of the image and you are too close when your subject ran away or you got bitten. 

How a snake should look

  As the spring is approaching (hopefully), it means that soon there will be lots of all kinds of critters and crawlers around us. When it come to animals, people usually seem to divide them in to two categories, the good ones and the bad ones. In to the "good" category they'll put the cute ones, the majestic ones, and nice ones... cats, sheep, deer, dolphins, squirrels, and so on and so on... I love them too, they are nice. Then there's the "bad" group. That's rats, all kinds of insects, mice and then of course the slithering guys, snakes etc. No one probably would think when they see a squirrel "Ooh, how ugly, it has to be killed! Where is a shovel so that I can cut its head off?!" But alas when they see some of the "bad" category animals, "Kill it, kill it!!!", is the first thought in their mind. That's just so sad. Animals, no matter if they are in our eyes "good" or "bad", should be left alive if they are living in their own habitat and not doing any harm for anyone. Here's a couple of images. The first two are of a completely harmless grass snake and the other two of an other harmless, and actually quite a useful for farmers snake called aesculapian snake. And when looking at the images think, think who's worse for the other, a tiny little snake who's trying to escape when encountered by a human being or the big guy who sees a small snake and plays a big hero by killing that poor critter, and just to show off, lifts the animals body somewhere high so that others can see what kind of a "hero" he is?

This is how a snake definitely shouldn't look. Killed and placed on nature reserve guide sign.

           This is how a grass snake should look. Wild and free. These guys rarely even try to bite.

                                               One sad sight. A farmer friendly snake killed.

                  This is how an Aesculapian snake have to look. Ready to feed on some rodents.