A Beginner’s Guide to Reptile Photography

Here is picture showing a typical reptile photography session

Reptile photography is an increasingly popular hobby shared by some nature enthusiasts. Some just want to catalog the reptiles they see, others travel hundreds of kilometers, spend thousands on photography gear and hours to get the perfect picture! Either way there are tips and tricks to this hobby, unlike bird photography you get up close, and unlike insect photography the subjects can be dangerous. So, here are the ways of reptile photography, this will hopefully improve your skill and open your eyes to a whole new exciting world!

A photograph of a speckled shield-nose snake. Photograph by Liam Botha.

GEAR: The gear needed for reptile photography can vary but there are a few essentials. First, you’ll need a camera body, many beginners use the canon R10. A mirrorless camera is best, but the other DSLR cameras can also work. Another essential piece of gear is the lens. Most reptile photographers use a 100mm macro lens because of their great sharpness and close focusing distance. Some of the kit lenses can work, but you ideally want something that goes more than 50mm. A zoom lens is also often used when photographing subjects in situ, these are usually flat lizards, that can be difficult to catch, or very large snakes such as cobras. A flash is also essential, and a twin flash is best as it illuminates the subject from both sides.

Excited herpers after finding their lifer Soutpansberg flat lizard! Here you can see zoom lenses being used to photograph the flat lizards.

SETTINGS: Camera settings are essential for all photography including reptile photography. There are loads of settings to use, but only a few are a must or simply make your images so much better! Firstly, you’ll need to put your camera on manual or aperture priority, I use manual, then ensure you use electronic shutter first curtain as full electronic shutter cannot be used in flash photography. Shoot in raw with the drive mode on single shooting. For Aperture, f/5 to about f/15 is good. You can go to lower apertures if you want a really blurred background, but don’t go too low as this reduces the area that will be in focus. Shutter speed is an easy one, from 1/250 to 1/1000, although some flashes don’t allow higher than 1/250. ISO is just as easy and try to keep it between 100 to 400.

Focus: Manual focus is the best and use it with focus peeking or magnification to get the focus as good as possible. In some situations, you can use auto focus, for example if you are photographing flat lizards that can be very fast. In reptile photography you always focus on the eye unless you are taking photos of body scales for identification.

This is the typical position that reptile photographers prefer for geckos. Photograph by Liam Botha.

Posing reptiles: Posing reptiles is one of the most important aspects of reptile photography, and it is one of the major factors that determines a good or bad image. Reptiles are posed in a gentle manner with your hands and using a small piece of stiff grass to make slight adjustments. Different reptiles have different positions that they look good in. Geckos look best when facing down on a rock with a tail curl towards the body. When posing geckos, it is super important to handle them very carefully and not to touch the tail with your hands, this is because they can throw off their tails and this never looks good in an image!

Other lizards, excluding geckos look the best in relatively the same pose as geckos, but their tails won’t always curl so it can either be slightly towards or behind the body. These lizards are often the ones that are photographed in situ.

Above are some shots showing Lizards in situ and a snake eyed skink posed with a straight tail.

The pose of snakes and legless skinks is very much up to you. Usually, it looks best with the head closest to the camera and the rest of the body coiled behind. Cobras can simply be posed by using something like a pillowcase to distract them. Legless skinks are very difficult to pose as some of these will burrow into the soil and disappear, so avoid this by placing a plastic bag on the ground and covering it with natural substrate.

Above is an image of a Montane burrowing skink with the head facing towards the camera. Photograph by Liam Botha.

Safety and handling: Some snakes are venomous and it is crucial to know or at least have someone assisting that knows their snakes very well and have done the venomous snake handling courses. Reptiles should always be handled with extreme care; reptiles can also easily overheat so keeping them in a dark cool place is important.

Here I am trying to pose a Mozambique spitting cobra.

Thank you to Liam Botha for submitting this blog post, we look forward to sharing many more of his writings in the future.